Documents Show Meta Paid For Data Scraping Despite Years of Denouncing It (engadget.com) 11
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: Meta has routinely fought data scrapers, but it also participated in that practice itself -- if not necessarily for the same reasons. Bloomberg has obtained legal documents from a Meta lawsuit against a former contractor, Bright Data, indicating that the Facebook owner paid its partner to scrape other websites. Meta spokesperson Andy Stone confirmed the relationship in a discussion with Bloomberg, but said his company used Bright Data to build brand profiles, spot "harmful" sites and catch phishing campaigns, not to target competitors.
Stone added that data scraping could serve "legitimate integrity and commercial purposes" so long as it was done legally and honored sites' terms of service. Meta terminated its arrangement with Bright Data after the contractor allegedly violated company terms when gathering and selling data from Facebook and Instagram. Neither Bright Data nor Meta is saying which sites they scraped. Bright Data is countersuing Meta in a bid to keep scraping Facebook and Instagram, arguing that it only collects publicly available information and respects both European Union and US regulations.
Stone added that data scraping could serve "legitimate integrity and commercial purposes" so long as it was done legally and honored sites' terms of service. Meta terminated its arrangement with Bright Data after the contractor allegedly violated company terms when gathering and selling data from Facebook and Instagram. Neither Bright Data nor Meta is saying which sites they scraped. Bright Data is countersuing Meta in a bid to keep scraping Facebook and Instagram, arguing that it only collects publicly available information and respects both European Union and US regulations.
Funny (Score:5, Interesting)
So Facebook paid a company to scrape other websites, but when they found out they were scraping their own websites they sued them?
Re: (Score:2)
I'm really not interested in defending faceboot, and have no specific knowledge anyway, but without that (i.e. knowing the nature of the scraping and what was done with the data in each case) you don't know if it's hypocritical or not.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds about right.
Facebook only exists as a major social media site because back when they were starting out they scraped the hell out of the established social media sites, establishing themselves as the site from which you could keep in touch with all your friends on other sites... and then sued the hell out of anyone who tried to do the same to them.
And the scraped data never (Score:5, Interesting)
Heck, I’ll even agree that there are noble uses for net scraping. But you cant convince me that Facebook does ANYTHING unless they think it will help them make money. I’m not even mad about it anymore. They’re a company in a capitalist system. They exist to make profit. It’s what they do. It’s why they exist.
If we don’t like net scraping, we vote politicians into office with a mandate to make it illegal. Oh, we’re all more interested in other political footballs? Oh well, guess we don’t care enough to do anything about it. In a democracy, we get the society we deserve. Scrape away, Zuckerberg.
This just in... (Score:2)
Data Miners make Coin Farmers look tiny (Score:2)
Ever look up a price for something on the internet at four or five different vendors and they're all within a few pennies of each other? Companies not renowned for data scraping are data scraping to learn what their competitors are charging for similar products.
Thoughtful manufacturers of products can data scrape virtually all internet sales to sense an uptick or downturn for demand of their offerings. Targeted advertisers are not entirely reliant on your Facebook and Instagram account to learn your prefere
Shocked, shocked (Score:2)
I thought you could trust the tech giants.
We already knew (Score:2)
I thought everyone already knew this, or at least figured it was the case.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought everyone already knew this, or at least figured it was the case.
Not everyone it seems. But basically, if you're on the intertoobz, your information is all out there and getting used.
What's more there is a concerted effort to get around any of the protections you use.
I myself have a test. I'll do a roughly weekly test of searching for something, somewhere, then go to Pinterest and see if it shows up. Try it.
Note that it's best not to follow anything in particular on Pinterest. Keep them guessing what you are, because they algorithm the bejeezzus out of you all
it just makes their data more valuable (Score:2)
of course they fought other data scrapers. It makes the data they collected more valuable when put on the market.