CaliforniamovesonTwitter, Facebooktored-flag‘bots’

SANFRANCISCO•California has proposed legislation that would require social platforms like

and to identify automated accounts, or ‘bots,’ amid a push by state lawmakers to police the technology companies that have proven vulnerable to manipulation and the spread of fake news.

Bots, which can be purchased or created by individuals or organizations, have been used to inflate influence or amplify divisive opinions in politics and national tragedies. In the recent shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, for example, bots with suspected links to Russia released hundreds of posts to weigh in on the guncontrol debate. Russia-linked bots on Twitter shared Donald Trump’s tweets almost half-a-million times during the final months of the 2016 election campaign.

“We need to know if we are having debates with real people or if we’re being manipulated,” said Democratic State Senator Bob Hertzberg, who introduced the bill. “Right now we have no law and it’s just the Wild West.”

The proposed bill would make it illegal for bots to communicate with a person in the state with “the intention of misleading and without clearly and conspicuously disclosing that the bot is not a natural person.” It would require the social platforms to let people report violations, respond to those reports, and provide bimonthly details of those violations to the state Attorney General.

States — especially California, where many of the tech firms are based — are moving to regulate social media in the face of slow progress from the federal government. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Democrat-dominated state Assembly are working to push through a law that would require election ads on social media to reveal the identity of the buyer. California State Assemblyman Marc Levine, a Democrat, introduced a bill similar to Hertzberg’s, requiring tech