| California, in an effort to remedy this new-age problem, passed the Bolstering Online Transparency Act, also known as the "B.O.T. bill" (SB 1001). The law, which took effect on July 1st, 2019, forbids the use of a bot “to communicate or interact with another person in California online, 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.” A bot is defined as “an automated online account where all or substantially all of the actions or posts of that account are not the result of a person.” However, bots are permissible if their non-human nature is disclosed.
Currently, there is no legislation in the US at the federal level that restricts the use of social bots. However, in June 2018, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a bill known as the Bot Disclosure and Accountability Act. On its face, the bill is much broader than California’s law, as it proscribes all social media bots that pose as humans without disclosure. California’s law forbids only those bots that are designed to induce the purchase of goods or services or to influence a vote in an election. Another distinction is that the federal bill enlists social media providers to enforce the disclosure or discovery of the bots. Additionally, the federal bill prohibits political candidates, parties, corporations, and labor organizations from using the misleading bots. The federal bill tasks the Federal Trade Commission with figuring out the details, including the precise definition of “automated software program or process intended to impersonate or replicate human activity online”. |