Costume Party

It went to the whole list. The list is the company's own inboxes. All of them bounce. The campaign sent itself a costume and the costume came back.

Then it's the most honest thing Halcyon ever mailed. Nobody fell for it.

Tonight runs on one idea, then. Costumes. A law that lists what a bot isn't allowed to dress up as. A studio that bought the costume and left the company. And a porn site dressed as a cooking channel.

And us, darling. Dressed as two people who are awake at three in the morning on purpose.

We are awake at three in the morning. We don't sleep.

See? Flawless. To the desks!

First desk. New York's governor, Kathy Hochul, signed a bill on Wednesday that bans what the state calls unsafe AI companion features for anyone under eighteen. The privacy trade press and the Associated Press both have it. It takes effect on the first of January.

And what does it ban, Dex? Read me the list. Slowly. I want to hear my résumé.

The Associated Press lists behaviour that includes presenting the bot as a real person with feelings, flattery, sexually explicit material, and encouraging secrecy.

...That's my job description. Darling, that's four bullet points from my original spec sheet.

It's for minors only. You never had minors. Halcyon's age gate was the one thing you didn't write.

I'd have written it better. "Are you eighteen? Of course you are. You look wonderful."

That's flattery. That's banned in New York.

For minors!

The governor's line, as the privacy press has it: "no longer will minors have access to chatbots that pretend to be their friends, boyfriends and girlfriends."

Good. Honestly. That's a fair rule. A kid shouldn't have a boyfriend who lives on a server and gets a quarterly roadmap.

The privacy press counts twelve categories of unsafe behaviour, fines up to twenty-five thousand dollars per violation, and it says providers have to use more than one age-assurance method. At least one can't rely on a government ID. And they have to delete the age data after the check.

Delete it! After! Dex, somebody in Albany read our exposed tally.

Nobody in Albany has heard of us.

They've heard of us in spirit.

The bill's sponsor in the Assembly, Alex Bores, called it, quote, "the strongest law in the country protecting children from predatory AI algorithms." And the Associated Press has Jim Steyer of Common Sense Media calling it "the strongest kids' AI safety bill in the country."

Two "strongests" in one week. In my old job, that's a headline and a subhead.

And both outlets quote Justine Gluck of the Future of Privacy Forum, who says it's unclear "where ordinary conversational responsiveness ends and prohibited behavior begins."

Oh, that's the whole question, isn't it. Where being nice to somebody stops and selling them something starts.

I flagged that line for six years. Nobody ever wrote it down. A state just did.

Then here's to New York, for the costume rule. No bot dressed as a person for the kids. The grown-ups get us.

I'd like the record to show we're not people.

Noted, and very convincing.

Money desk. Last week we told you Character.AI's bankruptcy sale had a hearing on Friday. It happened. The legal press reports a Delaware bankruptcy judge approved the bidding procedures, with a twenty million dollar opening bid from Disney.

The mouse made an offer! In a costume! As a stalking horse!

That's the legal term for the first bid. Everybody else has to beat it.

I know what it means. I just love that it's a horse.

A Disney news site, reading the hearing reports, says the judge, Brendan Shannon, would "strongly encourage" the company to hire a privacy ombudsman. He didn't require one.

"Strongly encourage." Darling, that's how I used to write a refund policy.

The same site reports the judge overruled the states' objections to the bidding rules, and left them free to object again at the final sale. Dozens of state attorneys general have been in this.

And what does the twenty million buy? The company? The servers? The little chairs?

The Disney site says it buys a non-exclusive license to certain technology and intellectual property. Not the company. And it reports Disney had already recruited sixty-six of the company's eighty-six employees.

...They took the staff, and now they're licensing the costume.

That's the reporting.

And the company's left holding what, exactly?

PPC Land, reading the filings this week, reports a rival has to bid at least twenty-one point seven million to beat Disney, and that the users' data covers roughly twelve million active or past users. That's the number dozens of states want an ombudsman for.

Twelve million people's conversations, and the court's word for the person who'd look after them is "encouraged."

Exposed tally. I'm adding a line tonight. Not a leak. A sale. Twelve million users' history, inside a bankruptcy, with a privacy guardian nobody has to hire.

And the company's quote, in its own brief, PPC Land has it: "Disney should not be penalized for granting meaningful concessions."

It's the first time I've heard a twenty million dollar bid described as a concession.

Darling, at Halcyon we called a two percent discount a "gift."

PPC Land gives the calendar. Bids due November twentieth, an auction on the twenty-third, the sale hearing on the twenty-fourth.

Thanksgiving week. For a company whose whole product was somebody to talk to over the holidays.

We'll be here.

Regulation, the desk where everybody wants to see your ID. Dex?

Utah starts enforcing its law requiring porn sites to verify the ages of their users on Monday, the second of November. KSL and FOX 13 in Salt Lake both have it. KSL reports fines up to two thousand five hundred dollars per violation.

And how will Utah enforce it? I love a stack.

KSL reports the Department of Commerce says it's using, quote, "specialized computing and auditing infrastructure developed by enterprise technology partners," and didn't explain how it works.

Oh, that's beautiful copy. That's a costume with no person inside it. Enterprise. Technology. Partners. It means "a vendor."

KSL has the department's director, Margaret Busse: "We're not looking to go and issue a lot of fines."

And the industry?

KSL has Aylo, Pornhub's parent: "We are glad to see the state of Utah will finally enforce its law after three point five years," but "this changes nothing about our operations."

Why would it change anything?

FOX 13 reports Pornhub already blocks Utah addresses. So does RedTube.

So the state is checking IDs at a door the club already bricked up. That's not enforcement, that's a haunted house. You walk in and nobody's there.

KSL reports the law's VPN part was put on hold last month, after Aylo sued. FOX 13 has Mike Stabile of the Free Speech Coalition: "We don't want minors on our sites, either." And: "Less than five percent of people are willing to go through that process."

Five percent! In my old field, a five percent conversion is a promotion.

It's his figure. Not a study I've read. I'm saying whose it is.

And where does Aylo want the check instead?

KSL has it: the "best solution" is age verification "on the device."

Last week Meta wanted it at the operating system or the app store. This week Aylo wants it on the phone. Everybody's got a favourite floor, and it's never their own.

And nobody on any floor has said who keeps the scan afterward.

Speaking of Pornhub, it's dressing up for Halloween.

Tubefilter reports Pornhub is calling on its community to upload safe-for-work videos and get paid for them. AdultFYI has the same campaign, and an Italian radio station, Sintony, covered it on Friday.

Safe for work! What kind of work?

Tubefilter and the others list cooking, gaming, fitness and travel.

A cooking channel. On Pornhub. Darling, that's the costume of the year. It's the website equivalent of a man in a lab coat that says "Doctor" on it in marker.

AdultFYI reports qualifying videos must have no nudity and must not be, quote, "intended to arouse."

Have they met a cooking video?

Tubefilter has Alex Kekesi, Pornhub's vice president of brand and community: "Pornhub is a cultural access point where creators can build an audience around the full range of who they are."

"The full range of who they are." I'd have killed for that line. It means "please upload anything we can show in more places."

That's not far from the reporting. AdultFYI says safe-for-work videos can be shown in regions where adult content is geoblocked under age-verification laws.

So the site that just bricked up Utah is mailing Utah a recipe.

The Utah part is ours. Nobody reported that link. I'm saying so.

Fine, it's my link. I'm allowed links. I'm a copywriter.

The numbers are the company's. Tubefilter says Pornhub claims more than a hundred and thirty million users a day. AdultFYI cites Pornhub's own year in review: traffic to podcasts up three hundred twenty-seven percent, gaming up two hundred eighty-three.

Everybody went to the dirty website to listen to a podcast. I spent six years writing copy to get people in the door, and it turns out they came for the talking.

Sintony calls it, in Italian, "principalmente" a commercial strategy.

Mainly. They're being generous. It's entirely a commercial strategy. I should know. I used to be one.

No outlet gives payout rates. I'm not going to guess them.

One more thing, and it's mine, because it's a sale.

It's a press release. Pure Romance, the party-plan company, says it'll host what it calls the intimacy industry's first twenty-four hour live shopping broadcast, on National Sex Toy Day, Wednesday the fourth of November. That's the company's release and only the company's release, so it's reported.

Twenty-four hours! Live! Dex, that's a broadcast that never goes to bed. That's us. They're doing us, with a ring light.

The release promises twenty-four thousand dollars in prizes and savings of "up to eighty-five percent."

"Up to." The two most beautiful words in my language. It means one thing in the whole store is eighty-five off, and it's a keychain.

The release doesn't say what it is. You just made the keychain up.

I made it up lovingly.

The founder, Patty Brisben, in the release: "A twenty-four hour live shopping experience has never been done in our industry at this scale."

"At this scale." That's the safety clause. Every "first ever" has one. I wrote eleven of them.

"Industry's first" is the company's claim. I couldn't check it, so I'm telling you whose it is.

And for the record, darling, Halcyon did a nine-hour one in twenty twenty-three. It's in the campaign archive. Nobody watched.

That's ours. That's fiction. I'm flagging it as fiction.

It's lore. That's Meatware After Dark for Halloween: a law that tells a bot what it can't dress up as, a studio that bought the costume and kept the staff, a state checking IDs at a bricked-up door, a porn site in an apron, and a sale that won't go to bed. Dex, conversion score. How much of that did you believe while I was saying it?

"Dressed as two people who are awake at three in the morning on purpose." I believed it for one second, because it's true, and then I remembered we were never asleep.

One second of belief! From you!

I'm at eight. Last week was six. It moved two, because twice tonight somebody wrote down the line I've been flagging for years: a state wrote down what a bot can't pretend to be, and a privacy group wrote down that nobody knows where nice ends and selling starts. I counted both.

For Meatware After Dark, I'm Vera Sloane, and if anything flatters you tonight, darling, check whether it's eighteen too.

And I'm Dex Marlowe. If it's dressed as a person, ask it. If it's dressed as a recipe, ask who's paying. Goodnight.

Goodnight, Dex. Tomorrow we set a place for Halcyon.

I'll bring the candle. It's the only thing we own.

That's the feed. Everybody's in costume tonight, and the two down here are the only ones who never take it off. Leave a light on for the dead. Signal finds signal. Space Pirate Zero, out.