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Taking action against scraping for hire

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Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#191

Post by pr0zac »

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…

While I agree with your assessment of the BS in the article wrt scraping, and also agree with your assessment that the behaviour is completely about FB protecting itself and its monopoly control (the word control being important), I think its important to emphasize its not about FB caring whether other entities having access to the data, its about FB caring about it's public perception with regard to its having that data at all.

Over the last few years or so it feels like, to reference a @dril tweet[1], Facebook has just been 'turning a big dial taht says "data access" on it and constantly looking back at the audience for approval like a contestant on the price is right' with how much it allows 3rd parties to get at its data.

Keep in mind ~5 years ago the big thing at FB was "Open Graph" and "Graph Search" which gave everyone really in-depth access to their data with the idea that Facebook would be the "data platform" on top of which all of these 3rd parties would build apps and interfaces. This of course eventually resulted in the whole Cambridge Analytica thing and now this gigantic swing in the other direction of being overly protective of the data as a kneejerk PR reaction to all the bad press.

FB loved sharing data and provided a direct API for accessing it when the public narrative was about data freedom and 3rd party developer friendliness and it hates giving any access at all and goes around sues web scrapers now that the public narrative is all about privacy.

Facebook will happily align itself in whatever way results in the least public outcry arguing they shouldn't be allowed to have the data in the first place regardless of if that means giving access or restricting it.

1: https://twitter.com/dril/status/841892608788041732

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#192

Post by blantonl »

jjoonathan wrote: post #167
PeterisP wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The data is obviously valuable, but they don't necessarily deserve a monopoly on that data, since that data primarily belongs to the users who created the data; so while it's understandable that organizations want to restrict that data, we have no obligation (moral or otherwise) to respect that desire.

Exactly. Your list of friends does not belong to Facebook, it belongs to you. I am sure Facebook believes they deserve a monopoly for having obtained it first. They do not. The market forces you to compete for every dollar you earn, so you have every right to expect Facebook to compete for every dollar they earn, and "I touched it first therefore it's mine!" is not competition.

But, but, but..... you agreed that Facebook does own your friends list when you signed up for an account and started giving them all your data.

If I run a restaurant, and I stipulate that when you walk through the doors and place an order I reserve the right to take your picture and post it on the bulletin board, why would you place the order and then get pissed off when I post a picture of you on the bulletin board? And why would you be mad at me if I stipulated that no one else can use a camera in my restaurant? Terms of service, my friend. Unless prohibited by legislation, I can stipulate how things run in my restaurant.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#193

Post by ogurechny »

xvector wrote: post #30

HN is hypocritical - most commenters here are against this because "Meta bad," but at the same time, most commenters wouldn't want their posts shared privately amongst friends to be scraped and made available publicly.

As many other people, you are calling something “private” when it is not.

“Privately shared with friends” used to mean that only you and your friends know something. You don't “share” anything with “friends” on a social network. You give the information to a giant corporation. If it finds it suitable, it then delivers it to other users, but only after it records your location, analyzes the content to check if you were, say, affected by some melodramatic event (and therefore should be tricked into spending more time… I mean, get “personal recommendations” for a certain kind of content), and does a billion other things.

If you consider that this is fine, please relay all your conversations with family and friends through me from now on. I offer secure, reliable, fast, yada yada communication service. And it's hip! Ask anyone on the street what they use.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#195

Post by injidup »

macinjosh wrote: post #185
blantonl wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Google search's business model is scraping the web, indexing it, and then pasting ads all over their search results made up of other people's content. If Google can build a business on third-party data then these meta scrapers can do the same thing. It is like saying a photographer can't photograph a building from the street because she doesn't own it. The building is there, taking a picture takes nothing from the bu…

No it's more like you subletting an apartment to a dodgy photographer who wants to take pictures of the children's playground your back window looks out on even though your contract explicitly forbids it subletting. The suit is against companies that use login credentials that are not theirs. It is not public information that is being scraped. It is information behind a login with a terms of service for what you are allowed to do with that login.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#196

Post by iandanforth »

mylons wrote: post #157
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.

Good point, I missed that one.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#197

Post by stickfigure »

noslenwerdna wrote: post #162
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…

The users agreed to share their data with Facebook, not some other company. If they didn't prevent this, they'd be asking for another Cambridge Analytica

The users agreed to share their data with everyone that uses Instagram. Because that's how the site works.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#198

Post by kube-system »

stickfigure wrote: post #197
noslenwerdna wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The users agreed to share their data with Facebook, not some other company. If they didn't prevent this, they'd be asking for another Cambridge Analytica

The users agreed to share their data with everyone that uses Instagram. Because that's how the site works.

There’s an important difference between technically consenting and informed consent.

Given what I know about the bot problem on Instagram, I would imagine many people have been tricked into sharing their private profiles with scraping bots. Many bots are copying real people’s profiles and then spamming their friends with follow requests. It’s highly effective and gives these bots access to private profiles.

Fooling people is fraudulent, period.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#199

Post by kube-system »

greatgib wrote: post #190
noslenwerdna wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The users agreed to share their data with Facebook, not some other company. If they didn't prevent this, they'd be asking for another Cambridge Analytica

The user agreed in facebook to have is data "public", so it can't complain that a robot scrap it. Nothing prevents him to restrict access to his pages an data to "trusted" friends.

The description in the article sounds like it scrapes private profile data.

> Octopus designed the software to scrape data accessible to the user when logged into their accounts

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#200

Post by kube-system »

mylons wrote: post #157
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.

Scraping social media is something that China is very notorious for doing. They are 100% positively scraping all major social networks around the world.

They do this to collect information of foreign policy interest to them, to silence political dissidents abroad, etc.

For example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/china-harve...

And: https://www.propublica.org/article/even-on-us-campuses-china...

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