Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Taking action against scraping for hire

about.fb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 240 posts

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#201

Post by mechanical_bear »

EGreg wrote: post #120
blantonl wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should all be wary of corporate control and claim to rights built from their user base, especially if those services are offered for "free". That's fine then. And I agree with you. But leave you with this. Do. Not. Give. The. Company. Your. Data. They are literally "non-corporal" entities and work toward increasing profit and stakeholder value Again, I agree. But if you think this is a bad thing, then you don't be…

What a pretty picture capitalism is. Break out the popcorn for the latest regular installment of “ok for me but not for thee”: People You May Know employs tons of shady stuff Facebook doesn’t reveal and has saved their bacon early on from stagnating at around 100M users. https://mashable.com/article/people-you-may-know-facebook-cr... Facebook Beacon and others had a big outcry. They got hauled into Congress multiple…

The problem isn’t “capitalism”, it’s crony-capitalism enabled by certain elements of state complicity.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#202

Post by EGreg »

mechanical_bear wrote: post #201
EGreg wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a pretty picture capitalism is. Break out the popcorn for the latest regular installment of “ok for me but not for thee”: People You May Know employs tons of shady stuff Facebook doesn’t reveal and has saved their bacon early on from stagnating at around 100M users. https://mashable.com/article/people-you-may-know-facebook-cr... Facebook Beacon and others had a big outcry. They got hauled into Congress multiple…

The problem isn’t “capitalism”, it’s crony-capitalism enabled by certain elements of state complicity.

Okay, is there a single problem with capitalism, or is it perfect? The problem is never w capitalism?

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#203

Post by kube-system »

kbenson wrote: post #183
utahcon wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only argument I have here (sadly in favor of FB) is with "safeguard people against clone sites". While I did give my data to FB, I didn't approve that transfer to another site/system. That is the only place I could possibly see some legal foot hold.

It's impossible to control information once been created. The longer it's existed and the more locations you can see it make that spread exponentially more likely. Wehether we make that spread of informationlegal or not does little to affect whether it happens. There are two things that might help. First, don't share as much information. Once it's no longer limited to you or your close group of friends which hopefull…

“It’s hard to enforce the rule of law” is not a good reason to abandon it entirely. Data privacy laws make data privacy better even without being 100% infallible.

We should be both practicing good data hygiene and using legal tools to combat those who abuse data privacy.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#204

Post by trasz »

blantonl wrote: post #70
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…

Quoted post unavailable.

>the vast majority of Web scraping efforts are to build businesses on top of other organizations hard work and innovation

The vast majority of Facebook/Google's efforts are to build businesses on top of other organizations hard work and innovation.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#205

Post by sneak »

onionisafruit wrote: post #125
sneak wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pressing charges" isn't a thing.

It is a thing. In America pressing charges is when you accuse somebody of a crime and ask a prosecutor to bring criminal charges against them.

Prosecutors exclusively decide who is charged. No charges can be "pressed" by a victim.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#206

Post by kbenson »

kube-system wrote: post #203
kbenson wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's impossible to control information once been created. The longer it's existed and the more locations you can see it make that spread exponentially more likely. Wehether we make that spread of informationlegal or not does little to affect whether it happens. There are two things that might help. First, don't share as much information. Once it's no longer limited to you or your close group of friends which hopefull…

“It’s hard to enforce the rule of law” is not a good reason to abandon it entirely. Data privacy laws make data privacy better even without being 100% infallible. We should be both practicing good data hygiene and using legal tools to combat those who abuse data privacy.

> “It’s hard to enforce the rule of law” is not a good reason to abandon it entirely.

I didn't?

> We should be both practicing good data hygiene and using legal tools to combat those who abuse data privacy.

That's what I said. The first thing is data hygiene, the second is legal requirements. The difference I think is that the legal requirements should be on the actual creation and retention of the data, not just who owns it, who it can be shared with, etc.

As soon as PII information over a certain age is radioactive and linked to a fine per person, all of a sudden there'll be a lot less giant repositories of PII to worry about.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#207

Post by unosama »

throwaway_meta wrote: post #173

People that are criticizing this probably were also critical of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but it would be useful to compare what happened there and here. With Cambridge Analytica: - Facebook allowed users (with informed consent) to allow external developers to access their data and limited data about their friends, in order to build social-enabled apps. - CA exploited this to scrape basic profile data from a l…

The real reason most people were upset about Cambridge Analytica was it revealed to the public how advertising and PR companies manipulate us. The fact they violated facebook ToS is moreso the excuse for the press covering it when they wanted to write another anti-Trump piece. If you were accusing a specific newspaper of hypocrisy based on two article I might agree. But you're referring to general public sentiment, and I really don't think most people cared or were surprised about the data collection. The shock and scandal was the realization that targeted advertising campaigns and information bubbles have the potential to sway elections.

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#208

Post by onionisafruit »

sneak wrote: post #205
onionisafruit wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a thing. In America pressing charges is when you accuse somebody of a crime and ask a prosecutor to bring criminal charges against them.

Prosecutors exclusively decide who is charged. No charges can be "pressed" by a victim.

Yes, in most cases it is the prosecutor's discretion whether to bring a case to a grand jury, but that isn't what pressing charges is. See Merriam Webster's definition[0].

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/press%20charges

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#209

Post by throwaway_meta »

unosama wrote: post #207
throwaway_meta wrote: post #173

People that are criticizing this probably were also critical of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but it would be useful to compare what happened there and here. With Cambridge Analytica: - Facebook allowed users (with informed consent) to allow external developers to access their data and limited data about their friends, in order to build social-enabled apps. - CA exploited this to scrape basic profile data from a l…

The real reason most people were upset about Cambridge Analytica was it revealed to the public how advertising and PR companies manipulate us. The fact they violated facebook ToS is moreso the excuse for the press covering it when they wanted to write another anti-Trump piece. If you were accusing a specific newspaper of hypocrisy based on two article I might agree. But you're referring to general public sentiment, a…

I'm referring to the HN crowd, I'm not sure that can be equated to "general public sentiment".

I agree with your first paragraph, and my point is that it is not possible to argue at the same time that Facebook should share data more broadly and allow scraping, and at the same time be critical that Facebook allowed CA to happen in the first place.

If the CA scandal was a wake-up call, it appears it was not internalized enough for people to understand the implications of what they're suggesting in this thread?

Re: Taking action against scraping for hire

#210

Post by kaivi »

marlowe221 wrote: post #122
adamsmith143 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ToS have been around for decades, surely this question is settled by now?

Former attorney turned software developer here! Nope, it's not a settled question in the way that I think you mean. Each ToS is different so each would be subject to individual legal analysis in court on its own terms. Questions would include whether the ToS is unconscionable, whether the terms violate laws of the locality/nation, and so forth. It's the same with traditional contracts - the fact that contracts have b…

Why can't FB simply include a clause like "No kind of automated scraping is allowed, except for search engines in robots.txt"? This would save them so much time in court, arguing over the use of fake accounts which should really be irrelevant.
Post reply on HN