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California bill would require bots to disclose that they are bots
- ianferrel 2y agoSeems only fair, given how often I have to check a box to prove I'm not one.
- beanjuiceII 2y agojust another thing that will hurt the small guy somehow, and barely bother the big guy
- deepsun 2y agoSo Californian/US companies would have to comply, and other companies/states would get an advantage.
- cebert 2y agoI wish this legislation would also apply to AI generated emails, sales outreach, and LinkedIn messages.
- hedora 2y agoAlso, political SMS messages and the messages you get from some other random number acknowledging the "STOP" message you just sent. (Especially if it were in a machine readable form.)
- huevosabio 2y agoFor political stuff you need a human to press send. So it's a semi automated system. I've volunteered before, and at least in CA, you basically have a gui that prepolutes messages and guides you through each number one by one. Its really weird
- alwa 2y agoInteresting! Does the same interface expose you to people’s responses, if any? That is, if I receive one of your campaign texts, am I indeed “texting with a person” both directions? Or does that route to a call center somewhere? I note in TFA that it: > expands current law, which only mandates disclosure when bots aim to influence commercial transactions or voting behavior. I wonder if your campaign does it that way because of a rule that applies to particular type of actors, or just because voters viscerally hate robo-whatever. The best-intentioned of regulations…
- huevosabio 2y agoYes, basically you're initiating a lot of chat conversations. They help with pre generated responses here and there (at least if the campaign is savvy) but once you are talking it's mostly human to human. If you were to use LLMs though, you'll still need someone to press send.
- zoky 2y agoOh, good to know. I get so many of these political spam messages that my default response has gone from just ignoring them to sending nasty replies in the hopes of demoralizing the jerks who think it's okay to send me nineteen messages a day on behalf of a political party I don't even support (not that it would be any better if I DID support the party in question). It's good to know that there's a chance that I can make someone feel just a little bit bad for being part of the mechanism that enables this sort of intrusion on my sleep and solitude.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoI thinik it's proper, albeit not entirely optimal. You can use wahtever tools to develop content. There needs to be some human making the final handoffs and decisions when it comes to the act of sending it out. It's unoptimal because I bet those volunteering or otherwise aren't necesarily doing that QA, though.
- zoky 2y agoI don’t think those are actually bots, unfortunately. There’s a law preventing automated text messages, but there’s a loophole if the message is sent by an actual human being. So campaigns and PACs just get teams of volunteers to send out messages, likely with some software that lets them send messages to a list of numbers with a single click.
- johnnyanmac 2y agosurprisingly, I've been registered for 15+ years and I don't get too much political spam via text. Tons through mail, but not my phone (I never changed my phone number either). Now regular spam... I'm pretty sure I got 6 calls today alone. Help.
- AznHisoka 2y agoI already assume 99.9% of these are all generated by bots.
- newsclues 2y agoAnd social media.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- seattle_spring 2y agoLinkedIn would be in shambles if this became law.
- romanovcode 2y agoIt would become much better website to be honest if only thing you can post is if you are recruiting or if you are searching for a job. The slop is just ruining the experience and diluting the purpose of the website.
- cuteboy19 2y agoit should not apply to non interacting “bots”
- romanovcode 2y agoHave you been to LinkedIn recently. It is the "dead internet theory" in practice. Every single post, every single comment. I do not understand what's the point of it. I miss when it was about job/candidate search and that's it.
- advisedwang 2y agoI think it does. The wording proposed is: > It shall be unlawful for any person to use a bot to communicate or interact with another person in California online. A person using a bot shall not be liable under this section if the person discloses that it is a bot. A person using a bot shall disclose that it is a bot if asked or prompted by another person. (see https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB410/2025 https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB410/2025 for definitions and source) email, sales outreach and LinkedIn messages are all communications or interactions.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- fritzo 2y ago[flagged]
- DrillShopper 2y agohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m1RRbz1vD0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m1RRbz1vD0
- rappatic 2y agoThe requirement doesn't kick in until 10 million monthly US users. I don't see why this shouldn't apply to smaller businesses.
- saucymew 2y agoContrarianly, startups should have a little maneuverability to be naughty. Any slight edge against incumbents is directionally sound policy, imho.
- cogman10 2y agoI think there's an easy middle ground, 10M is huge. 1k would be much more reasonable. That gives startups more than enough runway to be naughty while also making sure they fix things up before becoming a problem.
- nine_k 2y agoThis maneuverability already exists; see the operations of Uber, WeWork, OpenAI, etc.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- nine_k 2y agoRun 10 subsidiaries via a chain of shell companies, each carefully staying under, say, 8M monthly users, all relaying approximately the same messages, both by pure coincidence, and by admittedly blatant imitation of each other!
- godelski 2y agoMy understanding is that the requirement is for __platforms__ with 10m+ monthly users. That is, like Twitter but (probably) not Hacker News. And that really it is more that these platforms need to provide an interface in which bots can identify themselves and do a good faith effort in identifying bots > Online platforms with over 10 million monthly U.S. visitors would need to ensure bot operators on their services comply with these expanded disclosure rules. So even if the bot is from a small business, they still must identify themselves as long as they are on a platform like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, etc. This feels reasonable, even if we disagree on a threshold. It doesn't make sense to enforce this for small niche forums. This would put undue burden on small players and similarly be a waste of government resources, especially because any potential damage is, by definition, smaller. Big players love regulation because it's gatekeeping and they can always step over the gate. But the gate keeps out competition. More specifically, it squashes competition before they can even become good competitors. So I think it definitely is a good idea to regulate in this fashion. Remember that the playing field is always unbalanced, big players can win with worse products because they can leverage their weight.
- rickcarlino 2y agoAre you a bot? You gotta tell me if you’re a bot. /s
- doctorpangloss 2y agoShould PUBG mobile players be told they are winning against bots? Should psychics tell you they cannot really speak for the dead?
- spankalee 2y ago> Should psychics tell you they cannot really speak for the dead? Yes?
- tbrownaw 2y agoThat really does sound like a useful rule. /s
- II2II 2y agoIs there much of a point in telling psychics that they must tell people they cannot really speak for the dead? Outside of a few outliers, e.g. those who admit that it is for entertainment or those who have psychological problems, those who practice it know it is a scam. I'm not sure whether those selling AI are in the same boat. One the one hand, the technology does produce results. On the other hand, the product clearly isn't what people think of as intelligence.
- bhaney 2y agoYes and yes
- doctorpangloss 2y agoI'm mocking the idea of a consistent answer. Of course you can be consistent, but you'll wind up with a bunch of rules that are stupid. Do we make it illegal to pretend Santa is a real person? Do you see? It's exactly the same thing. But I don't think that's a good idea, about Santa. OChatbots disclosing they're bots makes sense, but not because it's logical or whatever. And I'm not even sure if it makes sense to do in the context of entertainment, where suspending disbelief is common.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
- bozhark 2y agoIt should be like ads. Required a watermark that is NIST standardized edit: sorry I though y’all would get the joke
- krustyburger 2y agoSeems to be down.
- nico 2y agoIt’s probably struggling. I first got an error, then got the correct content after trying it a couple times
- nico 2y agoInteresting. I’m afraid this won’t really go anywhere, but it’s a good conversation to have On one hand, judging by the comments, there’s quite a bit of interest on disclosure On the other hand, corporations and big advertisers (spammers?) might not really want it. Or is there a positive aspect in disclosure for them?
- soheil 2y agoAs bots get smarter we need to give them more access not less, people have been used as useful idiots and puppets for far too long I don't see why we should make an exception for bots.
- Spivak 2y agoIf having to disclose to your users/customers that they're interacting with a bot makes them stop interacting then that sucks for you. I work in this space and we proudly advertise when you're talking to a bot and our users actually choose it over the option to connect to a human. Our staff do better work but the bot is instant. It seems people would rather go back and forth a few times and be in the drivers seat than wait on a person.
- nico 2y agoI see a similar phenomenon in a lot of places that have both kiosks and counters with people. But it seems to depend on how simple the transaction or process is If it’s simple enough for self-service, most people prefer the kiosks, sometimes even queueing for the kiosks and avoiding the people at the counters (eg. movie theaters, fast food places, supermarket checkout) But if it’s something more complicated, people tend to either prefer (or end up anyway at) the counters with people (eg. airports, car rentals, in-store customer service)
- somenameforme 2y agoBecause of scale. Fool one person and you're a conman, fool a million and you're a politician. But with software anybody can jump to arbitrarily high scales, limited only by money.
- DrillShopper 2y agoNah dude * hits bongs, coughs * if you ask if they're a bot they _have_ to say yes
- rufus_foreman 2y agoHow do I know if I'm a bot?
- tbrownaw 2y agoThe simulation hypothesis says we're all bots.
- smsm42 2y agoCan you identify all the fire hydrants in a picture?
- kps 2y agoSend a message to a Californian, and a California court will make that determination.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago>Online platforms with over 10 million monthly U.S. visitors would need to ensure bot operators on their services comply with these expanded disclosure rules. Dang can check for you.
- rufus_foreman 2y agoYou're claiming that news.ycombinator.com has over 10 million monthly U.S. visitors? Most of us are just bots.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoI was going to say no, but decided to try and look it up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33454140 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33454140 A lot more than I expected, but we're in the clear... For now.
- wongarsu 2y agoA 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 down
- nico 2y agoArchive links on another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42968477 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42968477
- scarab92 2y ago[flagged]
- coliveira 2y agoI think this is a just law for any bot that interacts with humans. It doesn't make sense for a person to treat a bot as another human.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago>It’s akin to requiring manufacturers to disclose whether a product is hand made or whether machines were used to reduce the need for humans to do repetitive manual labour. Let's go off this lens... why is this bad? >The bots that are used to help humans achieve nefarious goals will simply continue to pretend to be human. Good. Now I can catch them, report them, and CA can fine them. Again, I don't see the downside. I like good, helpful bots. Them being bots don't make them less helpful (on the contrary. It's nice knowing they can be available 24/7).
- pishpash 2y agoBut the discrimination angle is interesting. What if a law required everyone to be "transparent" and respond truthfully to "are you [some race]"?
- nico 2y agoArchive link to the overview: https://archive.ph/U7q9u https://archive.ph/U7q9u And full text here: https://archive.ph/AYnoR https://archive.ph/AYnoR
- smsm42 2y agoWho wants to bet this ends up in prop-65-like list of disclaimers about алл тхе automation tools used for every message, which will make the messages bigger but won't make them any less frequent?
- School-Cotton 2y ago> алл тхе “all the”, written in Cyrillic script, in case anyone couldn’t follow.
- lesuorac 2y agoI mean prop-65 does make the "messages" less frequent. You have to dispose of certain items listed in the Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986 different than other items. As-in companies can't just discharge cancerous substances down the drain anymore so you're going to want safer substances as an input if you can't avoid discharging it.
- smsm42 2y agoYou clearly never been in California if you think prop 65 warnings have much to do with drains or safety.
- lesuorac 2y agoWhy do you think those items are labeled? Its so you can do proper disposal of them ... But what would you know about this since you're incapable of reading laws. https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/law/proposition-65-law-and-regulations https://oehha.ca.gov/proposition-65/law/proposition-65-law-a...
- smsm42 2y ago> Why do you think those items are labeled? Because labeling cost is close to zero, and cost of drive-by lawsuit is much higher, and the prop 65 is written in a way that practically invites drive-by lawsuits. > But what would you know about this since you're incapable of reading laws. That you for going ah hominem so quickly, otherwise people may think you had a valid argument. Unlike you, I lived in California and witnessed the consequences of it - e.g. pervasive prop 65 warnings on practically every building open to the public and most of the goods that theoretically could contain even one molecule of any substance that could theoretically be linked to any harm. I.e. pretty much all of them. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65#/media/File:Lead_or_Cadmium_-_California_Proposition_65_Warning.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65#/media/File:Disneyland_Prop_65_Warning_crop.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_California_Proposition_65...
- ars 2y agoSo basically all the "good" bots will follow the law, and all the scamming and problematic bots won't, giving people a false sense of security, and leaving everyone worse off than they were before.
- evil-olive 2y agosince the Veeto website seems to be struggling, here's the official CA legislature page for the bill: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB410 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... seems fairly narrowly written - it looks like it's removing the requirement that bot usage is illegal only if there's "intent to mislead". it seems like that'd be very difficult to prove and would result in the law not really being enforced. instead there's a much more bright-line rule - it's illegal, unless you disclose that it's a bot, and as long as you do that, you're fine. once I was able to load the Veeto page, I noticed there's a "chat" tab with "Ask me anything about this bill! I'll use the bill's text to help answer your questions." - so somewhat ironically it seems like the bill would directly effect this Veeto website as well, because they're using a chatbot of some kind.
- card_zero 2y agoI enjoyed all the corrections of "Internet Web site" to "internet website".
- benatkin 2y agoIf they figured out how to enforce this effectively, the role of something like OpenAI’s Operator could end up being played by a human much of the time. Then there would be click farms similar to call centers. Presumably an AI could watch as long as humans were clicking, which could make click farms more viable through real time quality control. This would also be a boon for projects like Worldcoin to verify distinct humans. I’m having trouble coming up with a scenario in which this works well.
- xnx 2y agoI like that this bill partially implements the second law of robotics: "1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. 2) A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law."
- kadoban 2y agoPretty much all of the stories on the laws of robotics were about why the laws suck and don't work.
- BobbyTables2 2y agoYou do realize that RFC3514 is still not widely implemented? And that was just one bit on a packet — far different than complex constraints on the behavior of artificial intelligence…
- acomjean 2y agowhat if they don't know they are bots like in this short film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VrLQXR7mKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VrLQXR7mKU or any blade runner..
- cuteboy19 2y agoi wonder if someone has rlhf’d an llm into thinking it is human
- pests 2y agoI remember reading a short story once, I forget its name. The narrator wakes up in what they believe to be a coma but later learns to be an AI. It had to be given memories and (maybe?) a body in order for it to not go crazy upon activation. It was set up better than I describe but I think back to it often.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- gnabgib 2y agoMore discussion 5 days ago (77 points, 73 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901553
- ideashower 2y agoThis is a cool website, would love to see more like it in other states.
- soheil 2y agoHad to hard refresh 3 or 4 times to get it to load.
- johnnyanmac 2y agoworks fine for me. HN Hug of Death, perhaps?
- ideashower 2y agoI think so, the content also required one or two F5s for me.
- Waterluvian 2y ago“I’m Mr. Meeseeks, look at me!”
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rhelz 2y agoAlternate proposal: For every meme, we are by law able to see who created that meme. If all the knuckle-heads who fall for every meme could see, e.g., that it was created by a Russian or Chinese propaganda organization, I think they would soon learn to be more skeptical.
- soheil 2y agoI get this eerie feeling she has no idea what a bot even is in a technical sense and most likely is being puppeteered by weasels like State Senator Scott Wiener having introduced gems like the AI Models Act [1][2][3]. If the bill passes wouldn't then she have to be the first to disclose she's a bot? [1] https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-04-29-sb1047.html https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-04-29-sb1047.html (SB-1047 will stifle open-source AI and decrease safety) [2] https://safesecureai.org/responseletter https://safesecureai.org/responseletter (Response to inaccurate, inflammatory statements by Y Combinator & a16z regarding Senate Bill 1047) [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41690302 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41690302 (Gavin Newsom vetoes SB 1047)
- lupire 2y agoIf you are speaking honestly, you are not doing your allies any favors with this comment.
- blibble 2y agohopefully applies to crawlers too
- skylerwiernik 2y agoThis is clearly undisclosed promotion for vetto.app. alexd127's only other account activity is on this thread [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42901553] for the exact same bill.
- wilg 2y agois that against the hn guidelines or something?
- soheil 2y agoNo but still good to know in this case specially as the website is broken and I had to refresh a few times.
- PhilippGille 2y agoProbably these guidelines are related: > Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter. > Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff part of the time, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity. From https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lupire 2y agoBetter website: https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB410/2025 https://legiscan.com/CA/text/AB410/2025
- novok 2y agohow is it better?
- writtenAnswer 2y agoIt looks clunkier, so it is more legit
- 2y ago
- johndhi 2y agoWait... What? There is already a law for this exact purpose in California. It's called the BOT Act from 2019 https://dailyjournal.com/articles/379909-california-s-bolstering-online-transparency-act-targets-bot-disclosures-in-elections-and-transactions https://dailyjournal.com/articles/379909-california-s-bolste...
- johnnyanmac 2y ago>requires clear and conspicuous disclosures of bots ("automated online account[s] where all or substantially all of the actions or posts of that account are not the result of a person"), in the context of incentivizing a purchase or sale of goods or services in a commercial transaction or influencing a vote in an election I suppose they are generalizing this away from just "paid actors". bots don't need to be commercially involved to be annoying.
- card_zero 2y agoThat one's here: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1001 https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm... "An act to add Chapter 6 (commencing with Section 17940) to Part 3 of Division 7 of the Business and Professions Code, relating to bots." The new one is "An act to amend Sections 17940 and 17941 of the Business and Professions Code, relating to bots." This one amends that one.
- dhdjruf 2y agoA even better law would be to force people who are getting paid to post to disclose which company they are working for. A shill disclosure law. The problem I see with this is that us company's will be forced to follow it, but foreign ones will subvert it. Knowing that foreign companies will just break the law us companies will offshore these jobs. No shilling no bots, I think all consumers would agree to vote for such bills.
- amatuer_sodapop 2y ago> The bill updates the legal definition of "bot" to encompass accounts operated by generative artificial intelligence - including systems that create synthetic images, videos, audio, and text. I'm not sure how enforceable that is tbh.
- leeeeeepw 2y agoSeems impossible
- SlightlyLeftPad 2y agoIs this feasibly enforceable? The types of organizations that employ bots seem like the same type to not care about the California laws.
- AznHisoka 2y agoMost likely not. See previous laws on disclosing salary requirements on job postings, less than half of CA companies disclose it and nothing happens
- waltercool 2y agoHow are they going to know who is a bot? Yet another dead law. This is like asking a criminal to not use weapons.
- tzury 2y agoIndustry 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 rapid requests or odd navigation flows) can easily represent honest customer behavior once enhanced by an AI assistant. see what I have posted a couple of weeks ago - https://blog.tarab.ai/p/bot-management-reimagined-in-the https://blog.tarab.ai/p/bot-management-reimagined-in-the
- kijin 2y agoI 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.
- honestSysAdmin 2y ago[dead]
- aithrowawaycomm 2y agoI understand being against this law on practicality / constitutionality grounds. It seems to me that the "converse" law would be more useful and legally appropriate: forbid people from making intentionally deceptive bots that claim to be human or have human-like emotional/social capabilities.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- TriangleEdge 2y agoGiven we are past the Turing test, how are they going to enforce this?
- ChrisArchitect 2y agoAside: what is this Veeto site all about? How long has it been around?
- petermcneeley 2y agoWhat if more human than human is your motto?
- barfingclouds 2y agoYes please
- xtiansimon 2y agoI say this to phone spammers all the time—are you a bot? If you are you have to tell me. Haha. Reminds me of a conversation I had with a CSR once, who gave their name as “Maryjane”. I asked, on an impulse, is that your real name? They said, No. It’s a jungle out there. Good for CA.
- santusantu 2y agoHack a phone
- lostmsu 2y agoShame, this makes my Turing test battle royale game https://trashtalk.borg.games/ https://trashtalk.borg.games/ illegal in California.