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California Governor Jerry Brown Signs a Bill That Bans Bots From Pretending To be Real People (nbcnews.com)
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.
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.
This is going to hurt the Anonymous Coward industry. There are always economic consequences for these kind of liberal laws.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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.
Put the bots in cyber jail? Force them to do other cyber community service?
"If you can't tell the difference, does it matter?"
I mean, other than the ability of a bot to call 1E6 people simultaneously.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
If they can stop spam robocalls, how the hell are they going to stop bots?
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.
What about bots that make bots that pretend to be people?
In debates about Christianity, there are two groups: those looking for answers, and those looking to just ask questions.
..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 and Politifact are probably good places to start. So then the problem becomes: How do we educate the masses so they do this automatically?
I never thought that a state that sells itself as the center of the progressive group think could be so openly bigoted against Robo-Americans. This is Jim Crow all over again.
Don't make the mistake of adding a bot to the pool of celebrities you're following, and you won't hear what the bot is saying.
I am a Judge, Jurist, and I am not a raper of young girls. I am Brett Kavanaugh. (sniff-sniff) I do not rape. Have never raped. Maybe a keg of beer I have. But I like beer. Beer has been good to me. Let's me do things I would not do otherwise. (sniff-sniff)
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.
Video of some good progressive thrash music
Of course, that would stop some 1980's nostalgia dance craze recreations....
So keeping Russians out of the Olympics is the new strategy?
Perhaps, like King Canute, Brown is just trying to demonstrate his humility by doing this ...
There go all my twitch "followers"
Why do communists hate fun?
Make it so!
Humans ARE robots. They are just made of meat and not metal.
you say YES!
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
This law will look quaint and silly.
As a bot identifying as a person, I find this anti-bot discrimination and bigotry to be unacceptable.
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.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Marketers will now fast-track development of bots that can pass the Turing Test.
Can Slashdot do something about pastebin bots?
Go to the creimer YouTube channel.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
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.
No but a certain prominent company headquartered in California just demonstrated such technoloy and they certainly could be held accountable. Frankly just about any company that matters has a presence in Silicon Valley and that gives the State of California leverage. It's similar to how the State of New York has outsized leverage in financial regulation because of the fact that NYC also happens to be a major financial center where all the major players do business.
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.)
"Shoot, a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."
I am totally glad to be living in Texas where the people are actualy free.
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.
Nope, no sig
If the states were people, California would be crazy cat lady.
What about hybrid bots and medical assistants? I realize that what I'm talking about here are not the automated accounts addressed in the bill, but sooner or later, Governor Jerry Brown may have to address these bots as well in legislation.
In the first case, hybrid dogs bots move on four legs, and they have articulated arms with prehensile fingers that can open doors, turn keys, pull triggers, or place and set explosive devices. They also have eyes that can see long distance with clarity, and can see in the dark. They could have listening devices that could serve as ears, and that could interpret sounds. They could have smelling devices that could serve as noses and interpret odors. They could be attached to drones that could cover long distance with speed. They could go to a "dining hall" and recharge their batteries and gather instructions from, or report to, master bots or human beings. These bots perform the enhanced functions of human beings. Are these hybrid dog bots included, or exempt, from the bill just signed by Governor Jerry Brown?
In the second case, the Japanese have made advances in developing human-like bots that assist elderly patients. Are they included, or exempt, from the bill just signed by Governor Brown?
... only outlaws will have bots.
Pass a law banning russian putin shills from posing as real americans and doing things like creating two facebook pages, one anti-muslim, and one pro-muslim, and organising two simultaneous demonstrations, one for and one against immigration, in the same town, at the same time (like they did in Houston, TX), just to increase polarization, animosity, and fuel hatred, turning americans against each other, thus weakening the country.
THAT's how you wage wars in the 21rst century, folks. Not with guns, not with nuclear missiles, but with disinformation and propaganda. No need to shoot a single bullet, risk a single pair of boots on the ground. Let your ennemy destroy itself from the inside.
Cause let's make one thing clear: To Putin's Russia, america IS the ennemy. We ARE at war, whether or not you want to admit it to yourselves.
And now, watch how fast the putinbots will downmod this post to hell.
Hm.. my scrapers (definitely bots that pretend to be humans) are intended to gather data, the idea being that the more/better data I have, the more likely I'll get ad buys. So there's my commercial transactions, making me a law-breaker. Or it would, except.. the law also has a part about only applying to sites with 10M or more unique monthly visitors (Why?). So as long as I'm just scraping small sites, I can skirt under this.
Anyway, just commenting on this to point out the dangers of good intentions. A lot of stuff that I don't think they intended to outlaw (scraping) actually is being made technically illegal by this. Or maybe they did intend it, since the result of the law is that it's more illegal to scrape small sites than large. Two competing businesses could be scraping each other and only one of them violating, simply thanks to the numbers. And surprise surprise, the law favors the big guy.
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"?
can we get SJWs classified as bots.
Can Slashdot do something about creimer spammers?
also GNARL, antisemitic crud, NAZI crud, Trump crud, any political crud ftm
and COW crud MOOOOOOOOOO
I hear they've got job openings to find and eliminate misbehaving bots.
What if the bot identifies as human? Huh?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
All bots must identify themselves by their name. For example, instead of referring to itself as "Daneel Olivaw", it would need to specifically use the name "Robot Daneel Olivaw", or "R. Daneel Olivaw"
We're going to have a robots in prison!
I find most bots I encounter to be more intelligent than the human CSRs I have to put up with.
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.
Those things were all already illegal under US law before this, and in other countries too. Your lame attempt at astroturfing has been nullified.
is it illegal for a human to pretend it is a bot?
Most of us see the transformation of California from leader in Aerospace manufacturing, leader in education, very high quality of life, etc to a a loss of manufacturing, a fleeing middle class, highest levels of poverty in the nation, millions of illegals filling schools and hospitals and pushing down wages, and education system whose students are now testing near the bottom of the nation, some of the highest prices for water and energy in the nation, used syringes and human feces in the streets of the major cities (with the associated Hepatitis-A outbreaks) etc as a bad thing.
There are always a few people who are eager to castrate themselves, eat poisoned pudding and climb under a purple napkin to catch a ride to the comet however. You would appear to be a member of governor Moonbeam's cult.
Most of these people ignore laws already on the books so this is just another frivilous law with no real teeth. Spam calls already at levels that are beyond annoying. No matter if they are bots or real people.
We'll always find a way. BTW, how about a law preventing humans from pretending to be machines?
Organization? You must be joking..
laws. yep. works every time ;)
I thought you weren't posting on Slashdot anymore, Chris?
Besides, this is the correct URL for your digital vomitation:
https://ua-video.com/c/UC8oH0o...
Do they even make handcuffs for bots?
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Easy, how many virtual game good purchases are made by people playing mostly bots?
Games purporting to have human players or computer shills will have to label the players as computer bots.
Good for the industry as there's an uptake in wonderfully semi-skilled players with accounts just about my power level in card game X right now. Where the account profile looks as if the person got an account and only bought new cards without playing the game. The player has no count of interactions with the game community.
If AI can learn to play breakout, then it can learn to play a relatively limited number of cards on a fixed game board.
Given that California is governed by certifiable lunatics should anybody expect anything different from this sort of thing?
{o.o}
Not that I have an expectation for the outcome, but I anticipate that there will be a first amendment challenge. Just playing devil's advocate, if anonymous online statements are covered through free speech, why wouldn't bot messages?
Just another day in Paradise
Two problems:
1.) cre 1 mer
2.) 5440320
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
I like a lot of legislation coming out from Cal that actually has merit, but this is getting ridiculous now along with the no all male boards law. This is why people hate "liberals" and one of the reasons why Trump won, how do they not understand this yet?
How did no one make the joke that this is actually about the Governator?