Taking action against scraping for hire • Hacker News Board

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#151

Post by brushfoot » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:09 PM UTC

samsoftstuff wrote: post #74

It's like they don't know that courts just made it legal: https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/18/web-scraping-legal-court/

From the article: "[T]he Ninth Circuit reaffirmed its original decision and found that scraping data that is publicly accessible on the internet is not a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act."

The key phrase is "publicly accessible." This wasn't that. The scraping was done by automating Facebook accounts, which have terms of service, which forbid scraping.

ToS/EULAs make a big difference. They're the reason Blizzard could shut down bnetd's StarCraft server. They're why no one can legally reverse engineer Oracle to create a drop-in replacement, despite interoperability provisions.

More and more platforms are putting the majority of your user-generated content behind auth walls with ToS because that's how they prevent competitors from swiping it.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#152

Post by dylan604 » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:13 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #110

blantonl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Nah, you are straight-up wrong. In fact, it’s the opposite - the only companies who are scared of scraping are the ones whose business models rely on artificial lock-in, and we should all be working as hard as we can to demolish them.

>the only companies who are scared of scraping are the ones whose business models...

This is just patently false. There is an expense incured by scraping. There is no benefit to a host providing the data from those scrapers. My logs are full of various bots that pull data from my webhost that costs me money to serve. I run various sites that do not serve ads. I do not include any 3rd party tracking. They're just simple sites that I pay for out of my own pocket because that what I've chosen to do. Nothing shady about any of it.

It's just sad that your own personal feelings towards scraping prevents you from being able to accept that there are people with views other than your own.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#153

Post by Nextgrid » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:15 PM UTC

saddlerustle wrote: post #42

slightwinder wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article, it seems to be service for scrapping data you have access anyway. As long as they only handle those data to the requesting customer, whose login they used, I don't see a difference between general public, and this users personalized "public". If access is still limited to the people who have the access-rights, then I don't see a difference between accessing through the official interface, or via scr…

Users make information available on facebook with the expectation that they are able to later control access to it (other than the obvious threat model of screenshotting, etc). This is violating that expectation and thus their privacy.

There's no evidence of the accused scraper sharing the scraped data with anyone but the account-holder, so the privacy of their friends is still protected.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#154

Post by Nextgrid » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:16 PM UTC

xvector wrote: post #38

iandanforth wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I want a free and open web.

Good for you. Normal people do not want posts shared privately amongst friends to become publicly available.

There's no evidence the scraper companies mentioned there are making the scraped data public or sharing it with anyone beyond the individual customer that is already entitled to access that data through the official clients.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#155

Post by jjoonathan » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

matthewmacleod wrote: post #110

blantonl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Nah, you are straight-up wrong. In fact, it’s the opposite - the only companies who are scared of scraping are the ones whose business models rely on artificial lock-in, and we should all be working as hard as we can to demolish them.

It's wild that people are arguing that their friend list should belong exclusively to facebook and not, you know, to them and their friends.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#156

Post by Nextgrid » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

lbriner wrote: post #135

ogurechny wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others said, there is no “you” in the scheme. It's Facebook's data. When people access that data without paying, they are “bad guys”. When the very same people pay for it, they are “legal partners”. In both cases they can do anything with it, while Facebook can't be held responsible because of all the official agreements. So as long as there is no specifically bad publicity or money loss anything goes either way.…

What you are claiming here is not true in Europe. If FB hold data about you, the data is still your legal right. You can have it deleted and changed if it is somehow untrue and have variou other rights too. There is a relationship involved because ultimately as a FB user, if I don't like what they are doing, I can ask them to remove my data permanently and they must legally do that. If someone has "scraped" that data…

> breaches the GDPR.

Facebook breaches the GDPR all the time and manages to stay in business. GDPR enforcement is barely existent, and when it does happen, it's insufficient.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#157

Post by mylons » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

iandanforth wrote: post #59

Collecting the rhetorical BS: "scraping attacks" Scraping is not an attack. Monopolists want to pretend they own your data because they get unlimited access to monetize it whereas competitors should have none. "self-compromised" Monopolists want to sell you thus it's imperative they maintain the fiction of "one person, one account". By admitting you own your account, they'd have to allow sharing and they wouldn't be…

they also toss in the chinese affiliation in hopes to bring even more ill will from the reader towards the company. china is probably doing some bad things, but scraping facebook ain’t one of them.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#158

Post by stonemetal12 » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:18 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #92

stonemetal12 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is why they are suing rather than pressing charges. When someone steals your car you don't sue them you press charges. When someone doesn't uphold their end of a contract you don't press charges you sue for breach of contract.

"pressing charges" isn't a thing.

As far as I am aware it isn't a specific thing, but a general catchall term for going through the process of filing a criminal complaint, and seeing it through to completion. Maybe there is better words for it but "pressing charges" is what they use on TV so it is top of mind.

In general I meant there is a difference between criminal and civil law, and suing generally refers to civil not criminal law.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#159

Post by logifail » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:19 PM UTC

nojito wrote: post #115

logifail wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Logged in Is this actually private data, or is it public stuff that's become annoyingly hard to view anonymously because Meta chose to stick it behind a login box?

Anything behind a login gate is private data for that registered user only.

> Anything behind a login gate is private data for that registered user only

That's quite the claim, if only the login gate were either always there or indeed always not.

Presuambly such "private" data ought not to be being indexed by search engines and returned to users who search?

"site:instagram.com" is of the order of 228 million pages on google.com, and "site:facebook.com" is another 422 million.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#160

Post by Nextgrid » Thu, Jul 07, 2022, 3:20 PM UTC

squaresmile wrote: post #54

htrp wrote: post #13

This is different from LinkedIn v HiQ because HiQ was only scraping publicly available data that was generally accessible to the broader internet. In these two cases, the data is being scraped from FB/Insta using credentials that the client handed over or the mass creation of accounts solely for scraping purposes.

Yeah, I think this is more like the Cambridge Analytica situation.

I wish the Cambridge Analytica FUD would stop. CA's "attack" was to setup a malicious website that convinced idiots to give it access to their Facebook account using the standard oAuth2 flow.

Did they misuse the collected data? Sure. But people granted access to that data knowingly. This wasn't really an attack in my view.

Facebook wasn’t really complicit and definitely didn’t sell/give away any data.