Ask HN: Why isn't distributed scraping used on social media sites

2 pointsprakhar8972 comments

Suppose I build an extension for LinkedIn where it adds some functionality on LinkedIn user profile pages. This means the extension can see the complete profile of every LinkedIn User that the chrome extension user interacts with.

I can then send this data to myself and scrape a good chunk of LinkedIn. Apart from this being illegal, Why isn't this done yet?

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The problem is to become popular enough so scraped data become a sufficient represenation of all users. The app needs to be useful. At this point why ruin your reputation instead you can continue to gain new users.

I recall reading about this being done already. I forget names, but usually popular extensions are then sold to unscrupulous parties which add new code to do malicious stuff like this.

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