Earlier quoted context omitted.
Better website: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB410/2025
how is it better?
It looks clunkier, so it is more legit
California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
131–140 of 186 posts
Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
#132Industry will get there pretty soon regardless of that bill or another, since there is a paradigm shift. The conversation is no longer about scraping bots versus genuine human visitors. Today’s reality involves legitimate users leveraging AI agents to accomplish tasks—like scanning e-commerce sites for the best deals, auto-checking out, or running sophisticated data queries. Traditional red flags (such as numerous ra…
I think you still care too much about the visitor's identity and agency.
Step back a bit and ask why anyone ever tried to throttle or block bots in the first place. Most of the time, it's because they waste the service operator's resources.
From a service operator's point of view, there is no need to distinguish an AI agent that rapidly requests 1000 pages to find the best deal from a dumb bot that scrapes the same 1000 pages for any other purpose. Even a human with fast fingers can open hundreds of tabs in a minute, with the same impact on your AWS bill. You have every right to kick them all out if they strain your resources and you don't want their business. Whether they carry a token of trust is as irrelevant as whether they are human. The problem has always been about behavior, not agency.
Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
#133A decade ago, when chat bots were a lot less useful, a common piece of etiquette was that it's fine for a bot to pretend to be a human or God or whatever, but if you directly ask it if it's a bot it has to confirm that. Basically of the bot version of that myth about undercover cops. I don't see a downside in requiring public-facing bots to do that Not sure if that's what the proposal is about though, it's currently…
It bothers me that they didn't consider that this should be bilateral: a bot must confirm that it is a bot, and a human must confirm it is a human. I wouldn't want humans pretending to be bots, for a variety of reasons.
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Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
#134The requirement doesn't kick in until 10 million monthly US users. I don't see why this shouldn't apply to smaller businesses.
For the same reason GDPR should have not applied to smaller businesses, lots of people who had otherwise perfectly fine small sites that were useful and reasonably secure could not afford the overhead due to various factors, being self-bootstrapped, too small of a budget, hobbyist projects, etc the things that always make the internet great. The fines are in the millions at a MINIMUM, its ridiculous.
After GDPR became the law in the EU, we saw here on HN numerous announcements of smaller sites / companies just shutting their doors. Meanwhile, bigger sites and companies can afford all the red tape, and they win all these smaller companies customers by default.
Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
#135This is clearly undisclosed promotion for vetto.app. alexd127's only other account activity is on this thread [ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901553 ] for the exact same bill.
Better website: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB410/2025
Or the official California legislature site: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
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I am not following, proper labeling of products allows consumers to make informed choices.
Bots are simply another type of tool used by humans to reduce repetitive unnecessary labor.
Should bread come with disclaimers that it harvesters were used to collect the wheat, or machines were used to mix the dough? Maybe we can add disclosures to books that were made on a printing press rather than hand typed on a typewriter?
Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
#137What if more human than human is your motto?
Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am not following, proper labeling of products allows consumers to make informed choices.
Bots are simply another type of tool used by humans to reduce repetitive unnecessary labor. Should bread come with disclaimers that it harvesters were used to collect the wheat, or machines were used to mix the dough? Maybe we can add disclosures to books that were made on a printing press rather than hand typed on a typewriter?
If you come into contact with a harvester, it should be clear that it's a harvester, correct.
If you come into contact with a dough mixer, it should be clear that it's a dough mixer.
But if you come into a contact with a book, I imagine you might have trouble recognizing it.
Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
It bothers me that they didn't consider that this should be bilateral: a bot must confirm that it is a bot, and a human must confirm it is a human. I wouldn't want humans pretending to be bots, for a variety of reasons.
> I wouldn't want humans pretending to be bots, for a variety of reasons. It would be so embarrassing if your AI Girlfriend / Boyfriend turned out to be real.
your AI girlfriend/boyfriend is totally real, its just that its a south east asian who works at a pig butchering scam farm.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/02/06/the-vast-sophis... https://www.economist.com/briefing/2025/02/06/online-scams-m...
Re: California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
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How is it luiddite-ism to not lie? The core issue here isn't even about tech. It's about transparency.
Because they aren't lieing, they are simply not disclosing whether their actions are the result on an organic neural network or a silicon one.
Society almost never differentiates between goods and services produced directly by human hands, versus with the aid of tools.