So this disclosure will now be required with all robocall spam calls?
Aren't those already illegal, but just a nightmare to track down for enforcement?
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California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
201–210 of 278 posts
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#202Cool, hopefully the spammers on Tinder will respect California law /s
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#203Does this have to do with the Google AI booking salon appointments over the phone?
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#204That will be a fun one to interpret. So if I use autocorrect, am I a bot? What if the device makes next word suggestions and I use them? What if the device suggests the entire post, but I manually approve it? What if it suggests five separate posts and I approve them all at once?
I'm not sure why you're being so facetious. In fact, I wonder why HN always has comments like these. Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court. You can't go into court to challenge a law with hypothetical cases for a good reason. Do you want lawmakers to arbitrarily impose constraints…
Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court.
That leads to the judicial branch actually making the law and not having a consistent set of rules depending on who the judge is.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#205I am reminded of Thoreau's quote: "There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." The root of the problem is not that we have bots, but that we have normalised lying and deception as part of everyday business. We allow companies to pretend that bots are human beings, and allow call-center employees in third-world countries to pretend (even sometimes though elaborate lying) t…
The problem with norms: bad actors don't care about them. Norms and regulation/law can work together. Either alone are insufficient, I think. Strong international norms and regulations are probably needed as well. As we clean up our domestic affairs, we create more space for hostile state actors to fill.
It seems then, that it starts with the infrastructure / process. If the infrastructure supports abuse freely, it will be abused. There will always those who try to find a way regardless..
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#206I really hate this stuff. The article starts out with a paragraph of complete nonsense: "When you ask experts how bots influence politics—that is, what specifically these bits of computer code that purport to be human can accomplish during an election—they will give you a list: bots can smear the opposition through personal attacks; they can exaggerate voters’ fears and anger by repeating short simple slogans; they c…
> easily filtered out by spam filters
To elaborate a bit on that note: my guess is that California's plan to enforce this law simply amounts to suing Twitter/Facebook/TechCo if the Attorney General concludes that Twitter/Facebook/TechCo's automated bot filters failed to properly label something (e.g. from Russia) a bot. And society is supposed to rely upon the Attorney General of California to be impartial, commercially and politically neutral.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#207Earlier quoted context omitted.
Samsung isn’t the only one. Apple is similar too in its carve outs for water damage in it’s warranty. Im guessing samsung weasels out of it by saying water ‘resistance’ vs proof, but still marketing it with surfers and such? My water resistant series 3 apple watch screen died after swimming in a pool the next day to give a personal example.
> My water resistant series 3 apple watch screen died after swimming in a pool the next day to give a personal example. That's... surprising. To be clear, I'm not saying I don't believe you. But I'm definitely surprised - I've got a Series 2 which I get wet every day and even use while swimming and I haven't had any issues. My mother has a Series 2 or 3 which she also regularly uses while swimming. Per Apple's docume…
My wife's favorite watch is the Timex Women's Ironman Triathlon 50. The watch is labeled as being water resistant to 50 meters. Most complaints about this watch are that the band is crap and breaks after about a year of unextraordinary use. The other, is that after minimal contact with water, the inside of the watch face steams up. These aren't expensive watches, but they aren't cheap either.
Not sure how a watch intended for Triathlon use has a reputation for the band breaking at the slightest stress and the inside of the watch fogging after an ordinary dip in 3 feet of water. How does a watch like this pass QA and not get investigated (or sued) for false advertising?
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#208I felt stupid, but I have fallen victim to this on dpd.com while tracking a package. A helpful chat popup has appeared where I could request assistance from a support agent, but it was not disclosed that the agent is a bot. Needless to say I have spent a couple of minutes repeatedly asking a question, and even rephrasing it while being frustrated that this person does not seem to grasp my issue.
Apparently the solution is just to swear at the bot and you get punted to a human, the downside is many of the humans are no better than a bot.
Or you get a human that assumes the customer they are helping is abusive or problematic based on the prior messages, in which case they may be very unmotivated to help you.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure why you're being so facetious. In fact, I wonder why HN always has comments like these. Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court. You can't go into court to challenge a law with hypothetical cases for a good reason. Do you want lawmakers to arbitrarily impose constraints…
Lawmakers are purposefully vague because judges can decipher what the spirit of the law is and fine corporations or condone specific use cases when they are brought up in court. That leads to the judicial branch actually making the law and not having a consistent set of rules depending on who the judge is.
Precedent is foundational to western law. The first judge to make a decision based on a law sets a precedent that informs how that law is interpreted in the future. This is a feature, not a bug because real world situations are messy, complicated, and dynamic. Trying to enumerate every legal interpretation and eventuality based on today's conditions and technology results in a law that won't be meaningful 5 years from now.
Re: California law banning bots from pretending to be real people without disclosure
#210Doesn't this effectively outlaw services that scrape your bank accounts (but don't have an official API to work with)?