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cebert parent
I wish this legislation would also apply to AI generated emails, sales outreach, and LinkedIn messages.
hedora
Also, 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
For 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
Interesting! 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
Yes, 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
Oh, 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
I 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
I 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
surprisingly, 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.

advisedwang
I 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 for definitions and source)

email, sales outreach and LinkedIn messages are all communications or interactions.

AznHisoka
I already assume 99.9% of these are all generated by bots.
romanovcode
Have 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.

seattle_spring
LinkedIn would be in shambles if this became law.
romanovcode
It 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.
newsclues
And social media.
cuteboy19
it should not apply to non interacting “bots”

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