"Scraping attacks" LOL
Taking action against scraping for hire
21–30 of 240 posts
Re: Taking action against scraping for hire
#22Data harvesting is moral for me, but not for thee.
In general I agree that harvesting public data is moral. I think that in these particular cases it's: 1) extracting data from profiles that opted for not being public (only available to logged in users) and 2) reposting scraped data (publicly?) as belonging to the guy who scraped it without users consent.
If they are being harvested it makes them public by definition. Unless there was a break-in.
Re: Taking action against scraping for hire
#23Re: Taking action against scraping for hire
#24Data harvesting is moral for me, but not for thee.
It's their platform. Do you really want some random companies scraping your facebook and instagram posts?
It’s not “your Facebook”, it’s Facebook’s Facebook. You already made that data public, otherwise it would be impossible to scrap it.
Re: Taking action against scraping for hire
#25Of course, Facebook wants to make it sound like scraping is illegal, when it generally isn't. But account hijacking and mass-creation of accounts just to access private pages are clear violations of the Facebook and Instagram ToS, so they surely can sue for that.
Since when do you get sued for breaching TOS?
Re: Taking action against scraping for hire
#26Data harvesting is moral for me, but not for thee.
In general I agree that harvesting public data is moral. I think that in these particular cases it's: 1) extracting data from profiles that opted for not being public (only available to logged in users) and 2) reposting scraped data (publicly?) as belonging to the guy who scraped it without users consent.
> extracting data from profiles that opted for not being public
The tool lets you download the contact info of your friends, which you should be able to do anyway. In fact Facebook tries to trick its users into thinking they can do this with their data takeout option, but the downloaded files don't actually include any of the contact info for your contacts. Which makes zero sense, considering the entire point of Facebook is that it's a digital rolodex for storing your friends' contact info.
Re: Taking action against scraping for hire
#27Data harvesting is moral for me, but not for thee.
In general I agree that harvesting public data is moral. I think that in these particular cases it's: 1) extracting data from profiles that opted for not being public (only available to logged in users) and 2) reposting scraped data (publicly?) as belonging to the guy who scraped it without users consent.
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 scrapped data.
Re: Taking action against scraping for hire
#28Data harvesting is moral for me, but not for thee.
It's their platform. Do you really want some random companies scraping your facebook and instagram posts?
I'd rather anyone than "just Facebook".
"Just Facebook" has made the web shittier; entire realms of essentially public, often great content hidden behind a login wall.
Re: Taking action against scraping for hire
#29Of course, Facebook wants to make it sound like scraping is illegal, when it generally isn't. But account hijacking and mass-creation of accounts just to access private pages are clear violations of the Facebook and Instagram ToS, so they surely can sue for that.
Violation of ToS does not mean a violation of the law.
Re: Taking action against scraping for hire
#30HN 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.