California Banned Bots From Impersonating Humans
Social media are full of bots. And California legislators decided to prohibit them from impersonating humans. Will that help at all?
By [GNOME icon artists and Krzysztof Franek] GNU Free Documentation License via Wikimedia Commons
To some, it may sound like the story of a video game. Banning bots from appearing as humans. Or more precisely, a law in California that says that people who are online have to know whether they are talking with a human or with a bot.
This new fascinating law will take place on the 1st July of 2019. A few days ago this law has been signed by the governor Jerry Brown. And it will apply to many companies including those who for example run online chat rooms room. The goal of the law – named SB 1001 – is to control commercial and political bots that are trying to influence the public in one way or another.
The author of the law – senator Robert Hertzberg from Low Angeles representing the Democrats – says that bots can and often are weaponized in political debate and propaganda. He also says that they can spread misinformation, fake news, lies, transform political debates and be used for political advertisement. The SB 1001 law want to take a look at these bots who pretend to be humans.
Once the law applies every bot will have to give clear notice if it is a bot or a human. But experts think that it will have unforeseen consequences for bots of many commercial companies that communicate with customers. And to even guess the full consequences is impossible at the moment as many parts of the law and how they will be implemented are quite vague at the moment.
By Mohamed Hassan CC0 Public Domain via Pxhere.com
As it is common, this law has been created by righteous people who are angry and were thinking mostly about social media like Facebook and Twitter. But they forgot that similar bots are being used by many companies for legitimate reasons – for example as chat-bots on websites or e-mail bots.
Another question is whether such a law will even have any impact at all. How does Califronia plan to enforce this law? Especially with the fact that California is a big proponent net neutrality – the principle that all internet traffic should be equal regardless of the source. These two laws seem to be possible in conflict. We will have to wait until the summer of 2019 to see how California will solve this problem.
Sources:
- https://www.iflscience.com/technology/california-just-passed-a-law-banning-bots-from-pretending-to-be-human/
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=201720180SB1001
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