X updates its Terms to prohibit crawling/scraping of its data

https://stackdiary.com/x-updates-its-terms-to-prohibit-crawling-scraping-of-its-data/

But what if you do? Will you get caught?

339 points · 49 comments · view on lemmy.world

49 Comments

teft@startrek.website · 127 pts · 2y (11 replies)

If it's publicly accessible it's scrape-able. He already tried to make tweets not publicly accessible and look how long that lasted.

olympicyes@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 2y (9 replies)

It’s not even clear that it’s illegal to scrape publicly available data, so I don’t know what the TOS would be enforcing.

coffee_poops@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 2y (7 replies)

It didn't have to be illegal for them to sue you for violating its policies. It would be a civil suit for damages.

Eranziel@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 2y (5 replies)

Lol, then they would have to demonstrate that there were damages. The worst a TOS violation will get you is a ban.

kometes@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 2y (3 replies)

Bandwidth costs.

MonkderZweite@feddit.ch · 4 pts · 2y (2 replies)

Peanuts.

kometes@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y (1 reply)

It's still a billionaire suing you for those peanuts.

MonkderZweite@feddit.ch · 1 pts · 2y

Suing for 50 dollar or so? Fine.

coffee_poops@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 2y

Unfortunately, they have more money to blow on legal fees. The threat of a suit is enough to keep most perks from fucking around and finding out.

Salix@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 2y

Would it be violating policy if the scrapper only took the public data and never actually signed the ToS since they didn't make an account?

SlopppyEngineer@discuss.tchncs.de · 2 pts · 2y

It's not publicly available anymore. If you're not logged in you don't see anything anymore except tweets you have a direct link to. Even then you don't see any replies and the amount of tweets per day you can see is limited.

Kuro@lemm.ee · 17 pts · 2y

Yep, would never remember on the odd occasions I would look at Twitter, then just leave the site after being prompted to login

Lettuceeatlettuce@lemmy.ml · 82 pts · 2y (3 replies)

Lol this has the same energy as those NFT idiots crying about people taking screenshots of their stupid monkeys.

Noooo, stop scraping my dataaaa!

cheese_greater@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Never waste an opportunity to use "muh" in place of "my"

ripcord@kbin.social · 8 pts · 2y

No thanks!

SlopppyEngineer@discuss.tchncs.de · -2 pts · 2y

And the next generation of AI probably only needs a fraction of the data it needs now so the need to scrape the data is gone.

Darkard@lemmy.world · 51 pts · 2y (3 replies)

I hope someone makes some manic bot that scrapes every last tweet and posts it on a duplicate site call Y

SinningStromgald@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Might as well go whole hog and do the entire alphabet. Then do one for every iteration of every letter combination.

ZeroMmX@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 2y

veloxization@yiffit.net · 44 pts · 2y

He's still mad at those researchers for scraping the data that shows that ever since he took over, the antisemitism, racism and general bigotry has gone up on the platform.

Sanctus@lemmy.world · 40 pts · 2y (2 replies)

Good luck enforcing that.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Let the Supreme Court enforce it ;)

Sanctus@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 2y

It should, but it won't.

underisk@lemmy.ml · 26 pts · 2y (6 replies)

I’m pretty sure both parties must agree to the terms before they legally bind anyone so wouldn’t this just apply to logged in users?

thepianistfroggollum@lemmynsfw.com · 8 pts · 2y (5 replies)

Accessing the website is often viewed as accepting the terms, so that wouldn't hold up. Not that they'd have a legal standpoint on the issue.

NeoNachtwaechter@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Accessing the website is often viewed as accepting the terms

The scraping bot can't read the terms

But even if it could, it wouldn't give a damn :-)

mojo@lemm.ee · 12 pts · 2y (1 reply)

By reading this message you agree to my terms that I'm really cool

eskimofry@lemmy.one · 3 pts · 2y

Lol and you username

TheEntity@kbin.social · 8 pts · 2y

How do you read the terms without accessing their website?

tonytins@pawb.social · 25 pts · 2y (2 replies)

How on earth will do they plan on enforcing that? xD

xavier666@lemm.ee · 13 pts · 2y (1 reply)

They don't have to enforce it. If someone says bad things about Twitter by analysing their content, Twitter can sue them scraping.

IphtashuFitz@lemmy.world · 18 pts · 2y

“Our interns spent 500 hours collecting the raw data”.

ChunkMcHorkle@lemmy.world · 22 pts · 2y

deleted by creator

Jaysyn@kbin.social · 20 pts · 2y

This is hilariously unenforceable as long as Twitter is on the public internet.

7fb2adfb45bafcc01c80@lemmy.world · 19 pts · 2y (2 replies)

I thought this was an article about the X Windows system based on the preview for the article. Boy are those two similar-looking.

danielton@lemmy.frozeninferno.xyz · 2 pts · 2y

You could always join wayland.social

MJBrune@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 2y

Realistically, very little people know about x windows system even less care about it.

pseudorandom@kbin.social · 17 pts · 2y

Or just stop using X all together.

cheese_greater@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 2y

Crawling for me, not thee!

dingleberry@discuss.tchncs.de · 14 pts · 2y (1 reply)

Just update robot.txt coward!

Iwasondigg@lemmy.one · 6 pts · 2y

Took a look at their robots.txt, it appears to block all bots except Google.

BlinkerFluid@lemmy.one · 11 pts · 2y

don't!

You heard him, scrape more.

YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 2y

So he’s going to sue google then?

SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.net · -9 pts · 2y (4 replies)

When Elon bought Twitter I was hopeful- I strongly believe the world needs an open, free-speech based, 'public square'. The problem with the Internet right now is many 'public squares' are privately owned, and those private companies cater to advertisers more than users.

Sadly I don't think it's worked out that well. I think Twitter is probably better off than they were, but you can't have a public square without openness. And while Twitter/X is now more free, it's also less open.

SuddenlyBlowGreen@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 2y

Yeah, well, Elon showed you how much he actually values free speech.

ruckblack@sh.itjust.works · 8 pts · 2y (2 replies)

"more free" my dude people who pay $8 per month get their replies boosted up above everyone else. What are you talking about?

SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.net · -4 pts · 2y (1 reply)

More free in that the moderation doesn't have a bias. I think any bias is harmful, be it Left or Right leaning. I much prefer the current approach of fact checking posts with community notes over hiding posts that are deemed undesirable.

revv@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 8 pts · 2y
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