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Comment by immibis2 | Hacker News Reader

Anyone can make an account, though, and instantly access that content, so Elon doesn't really have any leg to stand on by claiming they're private. It's not the same as Cambridge Analytica scraping stuff you had to have certain privileges to see by tricking the system into granting those privileges.

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Elon unfortunately may have a leg to stand on, because it doesn't functionally matter whether "anyone can make an account and see it". I don't believe any legal ruling to date has been fine with that distinction.

Do you mean this will be the first legal ruling about this particular variation of the issue?

Not true. Creating an account requires agreeing to the ToS. And if the ToS prohibit this kind of usage, then legally, it's not allowed.

See hiQ Labs vs. LinkedIn. hiQ was scraping LinkedIn using accounts, and they were found to be in breach of LinkedIn's terms.

It depends what you mean by "not allowed". Breaking ToS isn't a crime, but you might be sued for damages, but how can they show there were any damages?

It seems pretty easy? Someone viewing it through a mirror isn't going to see ads.

But if they ban the nitter operator surely you can't just bypass that ban legally by making a new X account. That there are bans and the operator has to bypass bans by pretending to be a new person I think that this makes it different.

It's like a club that checks ids to ban people. I wouldn't call that club open to the general public.

Nor would it be illegal to report outside of the club about things people said in the club.

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