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Why do we even bother to give any credence at all to company PR-provided explanations like this?

They are spin doctors lying through their teeth, because literally everyone is. The culture of business writing/speaking has become so far disconnected from physical reality that it is amazing that anyone accepts these explanations at all, ever.

Like seriously, these guys have proferring casually miquetoast explanations for anything down to a science. If there is one thing you can guarantee, it's that the provided explanation simply isn't true.

> The culture of business writing/speaking has become so far disconnected from physical reality that it is amazing that anyone accepts these explanations at all, ever.

The execs, lawyers, judges, public relations crews, and others who deal with the language day in and day it must become inured to it. Joe Public might never read an EULA, and might be shocked (if not already pessimistically resigned) to understand what companies actually do with his data, but an arbitrator who hears 6 complaints a day has been sitting in the boiling pot for a long time.

Not all companies abuse PR to such a degree. Newegg took on patent trolls and I enjoyed hearing about that. It's just that controversial topics make the news, and if LinkedIn wants to make themselves look like idiots then you can be sure TechCrunch is going to report on that as the drama unfolds.

And that's commendable. Also very rare among large companies.

As an a aside, I visited Newegg last night for the first time in quite a while. It is a depressing remnant of it's former self. Totally changed.

> Why do we even bother to give any credence at all to company PR-provided explanations like this?

It's propaganda and it would be great if it didn't work, but it works at least partially. Someone who doesn't know anything about the subject will hear it and repeat it, someone will hear the repetition and give it credibility because it doesn't come directly from a company. I have heard the most stupid opinions from people that go directly against their interests. You don't need fancy algorithms to manipulate society, just perseverance.

People should bother a second to think who benefits from their unexamined beliefs.

To be honest, a lot of people seem to want to kiss ass for the “prestigious” companies, too. You can see this phenomenon on all Apple threads, for example. They either don’t want their status symbols tainted, or they subconsciously believe that flattery will net them something.

I'm wondering why there is a statement from LinkedIn, but nothing from Hiq Labs? I don't mind giving companies an opportunity to defend themselves when an article is written about them, but I'd expect the author of the article to get counter statements from other parties.

You overestimate the average intelligence of a human.

Relatedly — the court found that LinkedIn was selling a very similar dataset to the one they were attempting to cut off — so the claim that they were protecting customers' privacy was stretched

Haha what a joke. Do you have a link for that?

I think he's talking about the fact that with a premium membership you can have access to turnover rates stats etc...

Ah okay, thank you. In my book that still makes them hypocrites while their lawyers claim to protect customer privacy by not exposing such data. They should drop their claims and focus on improving the product.

From the opinion:

Finally, LinkedIns asserted private business interests protecting its members data and the investment made in developing its platform and enforcing its User Agreements prohibitions on automated scraping are relatively weak. ... Further, there is evidence that LinkedIn has itself developed a data analytics tool similar to HiQs products, undermining LinkedIns claim that it has its members privacy interests in mind."

I can't state how much I dislike companies or lawyers who doggedly pursue such selfish policies.

> This is an unpersuasive argument because it ignores all the computer users who are not "members".

It's not just unpersuasive, it's disingenuous. LinkedIn wants to reap the benefits of having a public website while excluding competitors from their definition of "public".

If LinkedIn wants a membership-only website, they can privatize it like Facebook.

As a data scientist, I won't use LinkedIn after seeing them pursue this. They need to learn what public and private mean, and that it isn't the job of courts to punish people or businesses for accessing publicly available information. LinkedIn can set up its own boundaries as many other services already do.

The principles in the PR are just a smokescreen.

Linkedin is being completely self serving. Taking whatever they can get, and feeding bullshit, sorry PR, to confuse the issue.

"On LinkedIn, our locked in members information is our sole competitive advantage, which is why we prohibit unauthorized scraping on our platform."

You might also like this statement LinkedIn provided to The Register:

"We're disappointed, but this was a preliminary ruling and the case is far from over," a company spokesperson said. "We will continue to fight to protect our members' ability to control the information they make available on LinkedIn."1

1. http://www.theregister.com/2022/04/19/scraping_public_data_l...

Members cannot control the agreements that Microsoft/LinkedIn enters into with member information as the bargaining chip. There are no generally limits on how Microsoft/LinkedIn can use the information, either internally or externally.

Great point about non-members/members

On LinkedIn, our members trust us with their information

I still get occasional emails despite having deleted my account years ago, after having a profile with them for a short time.

I've heard plenty of other dark pattern anecdotes about LinkedIn, and can assure them I would trust them as far as I could throw them.

They really should use the word "entrust" rather than "trust". It would be more accurate. But the trasnsfer of information from "members" to LinkedIn still does not provide an explanation for LinkedIn's efforts to stop HiQ from accessing it. This case points to the problem with mediating access to public information (e.g., user generated content) as a business. The further LinkedIn chooses to go with legal proceedings, the more they risk the courts upending this "business model" by exposing its inherent flaws.

s/bearning/bearing/

You can't stop me from keeping the car I borrowed. Your bank can't physically force you to pay back a loan. I can probably outrun the staff at that restaurant. Does that mean the laws preventing such behaviour should be abolished, the (implicit) agreement to pay for the food I order should not be binding?

LinkedIn presumably tells its users how they are using the data, at least if they follow the law. Shouldn't people be allowed to consider those terms to be acceptable without it meaning they lose all protection?

"But it's impossible to protect your data against all re-use", you'll say, "someone may remember it". That is not just obviously true, it is the only reason one might want the protection of the law.

Things that can easily be prevented by technical means do not need to be prohibited. That's why the common argument that "it's your own fault when you are raped at night, in a park" or that someone stole your car when you accidentally didn't lock it is so absurd: laws aren't so much about preventing you from being raped. In the absense of the law, you'd just never leave your (fortified) appartment. Laws are about allowing you to go outside, to not spend your money on steel-reinforced doors, to leave your convertible parked with the top down.

"Might is right" just leads to a pointless arms race: social networks waste money on protecting against scrapers. They'll hide everything behind logins or paywalls. Scrapers will waste money on overcoming those protections.

If the scrapers win, some people will decide not to do something they would have otherwise done. In other words: they have become a bit less free. The social network becomes less useful and might shut down. The scrapers find themselves with nothing to scrape. Congratulations, everone lost.

In this case, and in the ruling, the data bring scraped was available without login.

The ruling specifically says that scraping data that is publicly accessible (which I presume means without login) is OK.

PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE SCRAPING.

I'm really not sure what your argument is here.

LinkedIn serves pages containing their users' info, and users are made aware of this. These pages require no authentication, presumably because they're a marketing tool. People built scrapers to obtain that public info. LinkedIn said that was illegal, the court says it isn't.

I don't see who loses here, other than LinkedIn and other sites that want the benefits of listing information without the downsides.

Don't conflate the digital world with the real world. If you really want to go there... The way I see it, Linked in is more like a public square anouncement board. You can write down the details of what is there and sift through it on your own, or pay them to give you a summary based on what you are looking for.

Edit: Would it be illegal photograph the board, OCR it and provide a summary for half the price of others? There is such a thing and "wrong/stupid laws"