Corporations, by nature, work in a way that individuals at those companies don't. They are literally "non-corporal" entities and work toward increasing profit and stakeholder value, not improving the lives or situations of their users, unless that happens to correspond to making them more money.
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 believe in capitalism, and I'm not quite sure what the intention is to argue this point on a platform (HN) that encourages the most basic forms of capitalism - starting up companies with innovative technology and solutions.
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 times. And of course whenever they get caught, they always throw a “mea culpa” and do it all over again in a year under a different name. Here they are recording faces of their users secretly using camera permisions!!
https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/facebook-app-recording-ca...
Their entire business model is “Give us all your data for free.” Mark Z early on was flabbergasted himself when he realized he no longer needed to scrape sites on Harvard’s house websites and could just ask people to submit the data for each other: “They ‘trust me’, dumb fucks.”
https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zucker...
Proceeds to build entire business on this data…
BUT THEN. Someone else does it to them and they get mad. “You can’t scrape us!” LinkedIn tried this:
https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/court-rules-that-da...
And it’s not like capitalist enterprises even try to be consistent in their legal complaints:
https://9to5mac.com/2022/04/14/apple-calls-out-meta-for-hypo...
I’m not ashamed to admit that I’ve done some jquery shenanigans on my Facebook friends page to “export” my friend list so I can retake control of my friend relationships (disintermediation for the in-crowd).
So easy to push data in to Facebook, so hard to get even basic data out of it.
Let's also remember that a big reason Meta is hating on scraping is because of their own problematic behavior. It wasn't so long ago that they were suing NYU over research on political ads and how Facebook targets their readers.[0] In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if Meta's larger goal is to prevent this sort of research.
[0]: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/privacy-and-data-security/face...
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 building. That is all that is going on here, repeating publicly available information.
Not really. Scraping just gets data, not code, so it's hard to support this argument. The anti-scraping view is that the right to use the data rests with the company that collected it, but I don't think that view is held by most people.
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.
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.
Obviously, the idea of a bulletin board granting a restaurant an effective monopoly is ridiculous so your analogy is trash, but even if your analogy wasn't trash, your conclusion would still be wrong.
Meta claiming that all of the photos on Instagram are Meta's property does not comport with current IP law or the views/opinions of most of the users on Instagram who do own the copyrights to those photos.
You really shouldn't be able to sue anyone for use or copying of data to which you do not hold copyright. The stuff on FB is licensed to FB by the people who own it (their users).
I loathe Meta and want to boycott it. Unfortunately this means I'm now locked out of the only repository of most local events and gatherings in my city.
In some countries, life is literally not possible without WhatsApp.
If Meta wants to cry about the mean bullies trying to exfiltrate data, they need to stop wiping out competitors.
If you’re going to assert something as definitely true to the point of closing off discussion, I’d expect a modicum of evidence. At a minimum that you’d explain the reasoning behind your conclusion. What’s the source of the “vast majority” claim? There’s little point to advertising when you’re scraping a website for personal consumption, so it seems dubious anyone would have reliable numbers on which kind is more prevalent.
He subsequently realized that he doesn’t need to scrape if he can just make a viral site that lets people share this info with each other while he can eavesdrop on ALL OF IT:
https://www.esquire.com/uk/latest-news/a19490586/mark-zucker...
This is just patently false. There is an expense incured by scraping. There is no benefit to a host providing the data from those scrapers. My logs are full of various bots that pull data from my webhost that costs me money to serve. I run various sites that do not serve ads. I do not include any 3rd party tracking. They're just simple sites that I pay for out of my own pocket because that what I've chosen to do. Nothing shady about any of it.
It's just sad that your own personal feelings towards scraping prevents you from being able to accept that there are people with views other than your own.
It seems extremely weird that you’d want to publish content, but then get mad that people are using the thing that you published. But you do you.
Yeah and the vast majority of the internet and all these mega corps run on open source while paying pittance back to the ecosystem. Cry me a fuckin river.
Can't wait til someone sue's them for "scraping" their site for web previews and thumbnails everytime someone shares a link on Facebook.
The double standard of these muppets.
The vast majority of Facebook/Google's efforts are to build businesses on top of other organizations hard work and innovation.
You might want to reassess your intelligence there friend. It seems to be suffering from a common form of cogntive dissonance combined with some form of confirmation bias.
How so?
Well you clearly don't like scraping, otherwise you wouldn't be agreeing with a criminal... So there's the confirmation bias...
Which is also the cognitive dissonance part. You clearly don't like Meta/Zuckerberg by your own admission; but you are agreeing with a empty rhetoric attack against people who are smart enough to make use of Zuckerbergs terrible security practices...
Do you not see the problem in this?
Yes, I've gone on record indicating that I believe Web scraping to be generally unethical, and that I'm pleased that some action was taken against those that make it their business to do so. And that is all that I have stated in my OP. You've decided to take me on some circular mental gymnastics journey I'm still trying to wrap my head around.
If Facebook/Meta/Zuckerberg are OK with lying, stealing and cheating - then why should anyone leveraging their online properties need to abide? Until they're held accountable under broader rules I see no reason the consumption side can't bend them as well. And you may argue "this isn't how it works" but we all know this isn't how Facebook/Meta/Zuckerberg operate. They operate under the premise of: do whatever makes us money because breaking the rules is the cost of doing business. So, no - they don't get to spew propaganda to the advantage of their business under the guise of protecting users. That is complete and utter bullshit.
But of course, the general populous thinks it knows better than the people who actually know best. That being those of us who have been able to live our lives while learning from not just our mistakes; but others around them.
We are the rare and few; and considered the enemy to the mob. Good luck comrade.
Also please explain to me how someone giving a company their Facebook credentials is an example of "people who are smart enough to make use of Zuckerbergs terrible security practices."