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Of 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 scr…
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.
I think Meta might be mixing up these two cases here on purpose to make it look like web scraping is as bad as stealing photos to publish it on a clone website.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Violation of ToS does not mean a violation of the law.
I don't think I know the answer, but I'm curious: Does violating a website's TOS meant your accessing it beyond your authority, making it a violation of the US's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Violation of ToS does not mean a violation of the law.
I don't think I know the answer, but I'm curious: Does violating a website's TOS meant your accessing it beyond your authority, making it a violation of the US's Computer Fraud and Abuse Act?
Essentially, having that be true would mean that any given website could create whole new classes of criminal behavior.
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.
Where's the "posts shared privately amongst friends made public" part? There are two cases here:
1. A service that logs in as the customer (who voluntarily provide their credentials) and scrapes information visible to said customer on their behalf. Nothing about "made available publicly" is alleged.
2. An individual using a pool of bot accounts to scrape posts visible to any logged in user. Nothing about "shared privately" is alleged. To be clear I don't like the method, but I'll also have to admit I've used one of the Instagram "clone sites" in the past thanks to their login wall.
Unless I missed something, it sounds like you just made it up.
Data 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.
Scripts are tools, and like any tool they're extensions of the self. If it's morally okay to do it by hand, it's morally okay to do it with a script, so long as my script is respectful of server resources.
"self-compromised" lol
clearly these people just wanted an automated way to access their own data