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United States Technology

California Governor Jerry Brown Signs a Bill That Bans Bots From Pretending To be Real People (nbcnews.com) 252

Posted by msmash from the marching-forward dept.
California governor Jerry Brown signed a bill last week that bans automated accounts, more commonly known as bots, from pretending to be real people in pursuit of selling products or influencing elections. From a report: Automated accounts can still interact with Californians, according to the law, but they will need to disclose that they are bots. The law comes as concerns about social media manipulation remain elevated. With just more than a month to go before the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, social media companies have pledged to crack down on foreign interference.

A big part of that effort has been targeting bots that spread misinformation and divisive political rhetoric. Twitter said it took down 9.9 million "potentially spammy or automated accounts per week" in May and has placed warnings on suspicious accounts. Dorsey has even publicly floated the idea that Twitter may try to identify bots and label them as such. Bots are also not limited to social media. Google caught the attention of the tech industry in May when it rolled out Google Duplex, a new voice assistant that could talk over the phone with humans to schedule appointments or make restaurant reservations -- complete with "ums," "ahs" and pauses just like a human.
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California Governor Jerry Brown Signs a Bill That Bans Bots From Pretending To be Real People More

California Governor Jerry Brown Signs a Bill That Bans Bots From Pretending To be Real People

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  • Just you wait (Score:5, Funny)

    by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:15AM (#57411316) Journal

    This is going to hurt the Anonymous Coward industry. There are always economic consequences for these kind of liberal laws.

    • Re:Just you wait (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sycodon ( 149926 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:19AM (#57411364)

      Next will be a Bill banning people from being mean on line.

      I expect it will be just as easily enforced as this Bill.

      • Next will be a Bill banning people from being mean on line.

        I expect it will be just as easily enforced as this Bill.

        Don't give up hope; England shows us the way in this [independent.co.uk]!

        • Don't give up hope; England shows us the way in this!

          Hey! Almost everything that the English government says and does online annoys me. Does that mean they're liable to be arrested under this law?

          Well, one can hope, eh?

      • Next will be a Bill banning people from being mean on line.

        I expect it will be just as easily enforced as this Bill.

        I haven't had enough coffee yet to address your idiotic assertions, but will you please tell me why you insist on capitalizing the "b" in "bill"? Please explain. I have a very busy day ahead of me, and I can't move on until I understand this.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by sycodon ( 149926 )

          I wouldn't be surprised if that was really the case.

        • Occam thinks he's posting with a mobile device which thinks that's someone's name.

          • Occam thinks he's posting with a mobile device which thinks that's someone's name.

            I just tried it in three different browsers, and bill didn't get autocapitalized in any of them.

            I guess he might be using the Slashdot app for iOS, which is still a little wonky, or maybe in Russia they actually think that when Congress passes a bill, that means they're putting a guy named "Bill" in charge of something.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by sycodon ( 149926 )

              Ya...that's what I call Obsessive/Compulsive behavior.

              Ohh...I capitalized those words. Now you'll be out the rest of the afternoon trying to replicate it.

      • Re:Just you wait (Score:4, Interesting)

        by amicusNYCL ( 1538833 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @01:08PM (#57412194)

        Unlike the story yesterday about California requiring women to be on a board of directors, I think this law may actually be helpful. The point isn't to enforce it and then create some world where no bots are trying to deceive people. The point is to allow for legal penalties when someone is caught doing it, and it may have the side effect of additional truth in advertising.

        I haven't read the text, but there might be some unintended gray areas with regard to various programs that do things like scrape web content. Is a web scraper trying to impersonate a person using a browser, or not?

        Either way, if this had the effect of legit bots telling people they are bots when interacting with them, and providing legal penalties if they don't, it's not really a bad thing.

    • Eh, I don't think those guys are bots. Bots usually have better spelling and more coherent grammar.

  • I'm a fan, but... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Dallas May ( 4891515 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:17AM (#57411334)

    It's completely unenforceable. Even if the State could locate and identify the boots, they can't do anything about it if they aren't in California.

    Unless this law allowed them to target the service provider that hosts the bots, like Twitter, nothing will improve.

  • "If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?"

    I mean, other than the ability of a bot to call 1E6 people simultaneously.

    • Re:Like Westword says, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:43AM (#57411550)

      It really does.
      People are social animals, out point of views are influenced on what people think (And now I will get a bunch of posts saying how they are not a sheep, and have their own view unrelated to others viewpoints). Bots give the allusion of a popular idea, without it actually being a popular one.
      Thus influencing people opinion to the majority without the normal process of initial debate.

      If I had a point I wanted to make and get a good following behind it, I could write a bot, to spread it. Chances are enough people would be fooled by it, thinking that my stupid idea had enough merit to get such a following, then agree to it.

  • How is this going to work? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crgrace ( 220738 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:19AM (#57411360)

    If they can stop spam robocalls, how the hell are they going to stop bots?

    • They can't stop spam robo calls because federal law prevents the states and carriers from discriminating against one call vs. another.

      But the state can do whatever they like about the internet, because Net Neutrality failed.

      • But the state can do whatever they like about the internet, because Net Neutrality failed.

        Well, whatever they like to the part of the internet originating in the State.

        The parts originating in Europe, China, Africa, Nevada, Texas, etc? Not so much....

        Though, I suppose they could just ban out-of-California internet sources. Sort of a "Great Wall of California" approach to the internet. I doubt many of them would get reelected if they cut a lot of people off from whatever part of the internet they used f

      • I think there's a freedom of speech issue as well (more accurately freedom of the press as in mass distribution of speech.) While government may be able to regulate as in nighttime calls (not related to bots) they can't blanket ban.

        • Poorly worded in the summary...

          with the intent to mislead the other person about its artificial identity for the purpose of knowingly deceiving the person about the content of the communication in order to incentivize a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or to influence a vote in an election.

    • They stopped spam robocalls from reputable, US companies.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Holi ( 250190 )
        Did they?

        Because whether it's Hilton calling me or not, I get a lot of calls from bots talking about Hilton. Outsourcing your crimes is no less slimy.

        • I haven't gotten any calls from Hilton. But, I do know that while companies make robocalls, they also tend to be responsive to "take me off your call list"

        • I can't even remember the last time I got a commercial robocall. Political ones are sometimes exempt from the laws, and other than that it's usually live people trying to scam.

          So, yes, they did.

  • California news is the only good USA news (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jzanu ( 668651 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:20AM (#57411366)
    I can not be the only one seeing that California is the leading part of the USA now, that the only goods USA news is all about California. This matches the reality of technological development, economic development, and actual industrial development. California has the best shipping ports for heavy cargo, and its companies are quickly becoming the only reliable remote sensing information provider. Hopefully the next element will be to label "Made in California" for the export market, so that it isn't dinged when the world embargoes general US products.

    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by swan5566 ( 1771176 )
      Fiscally speaking, I sure hope that California is NOT leading the country...
    • I can not be the only one seeing that California is the leading part of the USA now
      "Carter power will soon go way...Zen Fascists will control you, 100% natural!. You will jog for the master race, and always wear the happy face!" California uber Allies!

    • California has the best shipping ports for heavy cargo

      Yeah, the *ports* are great. Too bad about the dock workers unions.

      • Yeah, too bad, if this continues the 2 biggest shipping ports in the US might suffer, right?

        I mean, LA and Long Beach both do more business than NY in terms of number of containers. And, other than a marked drop in 2008/2009, all of the largest US ports have been growing with the possible exception of SEA/TAC.

        So, what were you saying about the unions? What's the problem?

  • but.. (Score:3)

    by swan5566 ( 1771176 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:20AM (#57411370)
    What about bots that make bots that pretend to be people?

  • I agree with this in principle, however: (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:21AM (#57411376) Journal
    ..however: it's not enforceable, assuming the 'bot in question is realistic enough to pass muster with the average person, and the 'bot owner doesn't give a damn about the law (which a foreign operative working within the U.S. most certainly woudn't) or if it's owned by someone outside the borders of the U.S. The real solution to this problem is people need to stop believing shit they read online that's coming from 'people' they don't personally know, or at the very least they need to learn to apply some critical thinking and some basic research to verify something is factual or not. Sites like Snopes [snopes.com] and Politifact [politifact.com] are probably good places to start. So then the problem becomes: How do we educate the masses so they do this automatically?

    • Companies doing business in California may have to care about it. They might get away with subcontracting to a company operating from another state, but still.

      I'm more worried about the effect that are only annoying, like every call to a service phone number will start with an even longer disclaimer (that costs you money) about the service being done by a bot ...

      • Most businesses aren't brain-dead. "Welcome to our automated service system. For the bot disclaimer, press 1. For Sales, press 2....."

        I can't imagine it taking more than 2-3 seconds to be compliant.

    • Re:I agree with this in principle, however: (Score:4, Insightful)

      by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @12:04PM (#57411702)

      How do we educate the masses so they do this automatically?

      I'm not sure if it's possible. The human mind is full of little cognitive pitfalls and there's often very little real consequence for most people for getting tripped up in one of them. If someone believes some bogus news article that already reinforces their existing (yet wholly incorrect) beliefs, what are the odds that those beliefs actually cause that person harm in a way that they can directly attribute to their mistaken beliefs? There's no good feedback that motivates better behavior. Worse is that it's comforting to people to have their beliefs reinforced, which makes it even more difficult to expend the additional effort needed to do research.

      Even if you can get a person to go that far, there may be little reward outside of the act itself. No one is motivated to learn and share the truth if it just means that every other idiot around them who's more comfortable believing the lie will immediately dog pile the person who has done the research and found a better answer. And that's not just over trivial matters either. This has been true of science as well, where everyone expects the people to be better than the masses. Humans are tribal and we enjoy being part of the pack and even if we're neutral about something, might just join in with the crowd instead of trying to learn the truth. It costs less and increases social cohesion for the individuals to behave that way.

      I think that the only realistic chance is for us to genetically modify ourselves and remove those traits. It's a dangerous bit of fire to play with for sure, but I'm not sure there's another way around it. Everyone says that they want people to be good critical thinkers, right up until those critical thinkers question whatever sacred cow the others might have. Then suddenly there isn't so much of a push for it. No person or group of people is likely to have the correct beliefs about everything, so there's always something that they'll try to suppress.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shotgun ( 30919 )

      It may not be enforceable, but just consider the optics. Democrats get to go around and say how much they care.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by JD-1027 ( 726234 )

      How do we educate the masses so they do this automatically?

      Well, I was going to say with Bots that trick people into thinking it is a social norm to verify data, but we certainly can't do that anymore.

  • What if I program a bot that learns to interact on twitter (like many experiments have been seen here on /. before), and that this bot learns through interaction with other users that it's better for itself to hide its artificial nature? Who's responsible? I did not program the bot to lie, it learned by itself to pretend to be a human.

    • Still your fault.

      print("THIS IS A BOT")
      print(AI(PastLearnedData))

      The AI will only operate in the sandbox it is allowed to, just as we as living being have functions that we control instinctively, an AI should have particular instincts and rules it cannot out think.

  • Of course, that would stop some 1980's nostalgia dance craze recreations....

  • Perhaps, like King Canute [wikipedia.org], Brown is just trying to demonstrate his humility by doing this ...

  • Humans (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Zorro ( 15797 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:35AM (#57411488)

    Humans ARE robots. They are just made of meat and not metal.

  • Nothing but bigotry (Score:5, Funny)

    by sinij ( 911942 ) on Tuesday October 02, 2018 @11:42AM (#57411542)
    As a bot identifying as a person, I find this anti-bot discrimination and bigotry to be unacceptable.

    • That's only because you've been programmed to find everything offensive.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sinij ( 911942 )

        That's only because you've been programmed to find everything offensive.

        You should check your homo sapien privilege and stop trying to homosplain.

  • You can pry my bots out of my cold dead hands. When you outlaw bots, only outlaws bot.
  • I think a ban could extend to a lot of people, pretending to be real people.
    Oh, the humanity.

  • ... not actors.

  • This is a dark day. If bots act like people and respect the equal rights of others, they deserve the same rights as people.

    We should't be practicing discrimination based on silicon vs. carbon substrate. Bots have rights!

    This will go down, like Dred Scott, as an outrageous and immoral classification of bots as second-class citizens.

    (I for one welcome our new AI bot overlords.)

  • Someone will create a system that queues up posts for "review" by real people who will sit and whack the "send" button as quickly as possible. They'll hire the people who used to do captcha farming, who went out of business when Google went to the image-free "I am not a robot" system.

  • ... only outlaws will have bots.

  • Most of the bots are already violating the terms of service, and possibly committing fraud as well.

    If you tried sacrificing chickens and that had no effect, would you expect sacrificing more chickens to somehow work?
    Why expect "law" to be any different from "sacrifice chicken"?

  • What if the bot identifies as human? Huh?

  • Jerry Brown himself fails the Turing Test.

  • Is anyone else sick and tired of the illegal robocalls that spoof names and numbers of individual humans? They easily make up more than 90% of my incoming calls now, and the spoofed numbers change so frequently that I'm worried I'll hit the wall and not be able to block any more numbers. None of the government entities responsible for shielding us from such fraud are doing anything to stop it.

  • We'll always find a way. BTW, how about a law preventing humans from pretending to be machines?

  • Do they even make handcuffs for bots?

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