Meta sues surveillance company for scraping data with fake Facebook accounts
theverge.com
theverge.com
In any case, anti-scraping feels like a form of DRM - a company wants to make some data effectively public (in this case requiring only a free account), but retain control of how we consume it (and monitor us as we consume it). I simply do not believe claims they do this for our benefit or privacy, especially coming from a surveillance powerhouse such as Facebook.
*Found it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn
Does the account requirement change whether the data is considered publicly available on sites with open signups?
E.g. how would you feel if some no-name free website/service sneaked in a "you owe us $1000 if you use this service on Tuesday" term into the novel that is their ToS/EULA? Or if the grocery store put up a "by entering you agree not to disclose our prices to others" sign?
On one hand, none of the surveillance were possible without Facebook.
On the other hand, a lot of the people have public profiles, which is expressing interest in being discovered, and Facebook is acting against that. And the cost to Facebook for serving the scraping requests is very small.