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4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

tiktok-api.seeksocial.io

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Re: 4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

#51

Post by breezybottom »

arcfour wrote: post #48
breezybottom wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user only gave TikTok permission to use the videos according to the ToS. And considering the majority of TikTok users are children, I think it's hard to justify morally, even if you could make a legal case.

A "data breach" refers to unauthorized access to nonpublic or protected data. Scraping content that is publicly viewable without logging in - or even with logging in, since an account is effectively disposable - is not a "data breach" (as far as any typical usage of the term goes). In hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn, the 9th Circuit (US) ruled that scraping publicly accessible data does not violate the CFAA's "without authoriza…

You still haven't checked the ToS:

"use automated scripts to collect information from or otherwise interact with the Services" — this covers the entire scraping operation.

"make unauthorised copies, modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile or create any derivative works of the Services... or determine or attempt to determine any source code" — e.g. reverse-engineering the X-Argus/X-Gorgon/X-Ladon signing scheme.

"interfere with or attempt to interfere with the proper working of the Services... or bypass any measures we may use to prevent or restrict access to the Services" — TLS-fingerprint spoofing, the empty-200 soft block, and the proxy IP rotation to get around rate limiting.

"use or attempt to use another's account, service or system without authorisation from TikTok, or create a false identity on the Services" — this covers the forged device registrations (fake Android handset + carrier profiles)

"use the Services, without our express written consent, for any commercial or unauthorized purpose" — the website is monetizing the dataset and selling the code itself.

Re: 4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

#52

Post by echoangle »

breezybottom wrote: post #31
arcfour wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something posted with the understanding that it could potentially be viewed by anyone on the Internet with minimal/no restriction. ToS are just what you follow if you don't want to get banned off of the site. If you don't care about that, then you can go hog wild, though you're being a bit of a jerk/not playing nice obviously.

Any company could potentially be hacked, so by that standard all data is public. And no, the ToS is legally binding on the company as well.

You don’t see a difference between accessing data by hacking a service (which is illegal) and downloading/scraping data that’s not protected? The TOS are a contract and only a civil thing afaik.

Re: 4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

#53

Post by breezybottom »

echoangle wrote: post #50
breezybottom wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The user only gave TikTok permission to use the videos according to the ToS. And considering the majority of TikTok users are children, I think it's hard to justify morally, even if you could make a legal case.

Is it a data breach if I right click images in google search and save them to my disk?

A data breach could leak into search engine results, sure.

Re: 4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

#54

Post by edoceo »

breezybottom wrote: post #51
arcfour wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "data breach" refers to unauthorized access to nonpublic or protected data. Scraping content that is publicly viewable without logging in - or even with logging in, since an account is effectively disposable - is not a "data breach" (as far as any typical usage of the term goes). In hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn, the 9th Circuit (US) ruled that scraping publicly accessible data does not violate the CFAA's "without authoriza…

You still haven't checked the ToS: "use automated scripts to collect information from or otherwise interact with the Services" — this covers the entire scraping operation. "make unauthorised copies, modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile or create any derivative works of the Services... or determine or attempt to determine any source code" — e.g. reverse-engineering the X-Argus/X-Gorgon/X-…

Still not a hack or a breach. Still "public" data. Still a TOS violation. Your up-thread claim that potential hack is the same as public is still incorrect.

Re: 4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

#55

Post by kenniskrag »

echoangle wrote: post #21
arcfour wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I could use $699. If this gets even a single sale, then maybe I need to try having less decency... (I guess that is sort of a roundabout summary...)

Would you say that this is immoral? Since it’s data that’s public anyways, I don’t see why putting it in a table and selling it is a bad thing.

Because a lot of things is public online and can't be copied and sold e.g. due to copyright, patents and trademark. Also if you access a website you are bound to a ToS contract and this is a breach of that contract.

Re: 4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

#56

Post by echoangle »

kenniskrag wrote: post #55
echoangle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say that this is immoral? Since it’s data that’s public anyways, I don’t see why putting it in a table and selling it is a bad thing.

Because a lot of things is public online and can't be copied and sold e.g. due to copyright, patents and trademark. Also if you access a website you are bound to a ToS contract and this is a breach of that contract.

Breaching a contract isn’t a crime though, it’s a civil matter.

Re: 4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

#58

Post by echoangle »

breezybottom wrote: post #53
echoangle wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it a data breach if I right click images in google search and save them to my disk?

A data breach could leak into search engine results, sure.

I wasn’t asking if a data breach could be in the search results, I asked if saving search engine results in itself would be a data breach. Apparently you think that scraping publicly accessible data from tik tok is a data breach in itself, so does this apply in other cases too?

Re: 4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

#59

Post by echoangle »

breezybottom wrote: post #51
arcfour wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "data breach" refers to unauthorized access to nonpublic or protected data. Scraping content that is publicly viewable without logging in - or even with logging in, since an account is effectively disposable - is not a "data breach" (as far as any typical usage of the term goes). In hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn, the 9th Circuit (US) ruled that scraping publicly accessible data does not violate the CFAA's "without authoriza…

You still haven't checked the ToS: "use automated scripts to collect information from or otherwise interact with the Services" — this covers the entire scraping operation. "make unauthorised copies, modify, adapt, translate, reverse engineer, disassemble, decompile or create any derivative works of the Services... or determine or attempt to determine any source code" — e.g. reverse-engineering the X-Argus/X-Gorgon/X-…

And who cares about ToS? That’s a purely civil thing, surely hacking (which is a crime) is worse than breaching a contract?

Re: 4.5B Posts Scraped from TikTok

#60

Post by smallerize »

simonw wrote: post #40
smallerize wrote: post #3

There's no way this dataset is going to survive on HF, right? It will be hit with so many DMCA takedowns.

It's metadata only, not video content. I expect it will likely survive - that's a pretty common pattern for machine learning datasets. Stable Diffusion was enabled by LAION, for example. That was metadata about images and URLs to those images, but not the actual image files.

True, but it includes the full text of the post. That's enough for some copyright strikes.
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