Meta, which pays for web scraping, sues to stop web scraping

Meta Platforms has sued an Israel-based web scraping firm called Bright Data for scraping data from its Facebook and Instagram websites – even though Meta paid Bright Data to scrape data from other websites. This legal battle kicked off earlier last month when the two companies in fact sued each other. Meta two months prior …

[Winkypop]

Ergo

Don’t put your personal data on the Internet.

[GruntyMcPugh]

Re: Ergo

I have an 'Internet Birthday' I use to register for web sites, so if anyone scrapes that and tries to use it to pretend to be me, they have duff info. I also use a string of daft names. But why be me on the Internet, when I an be a slightly younger, funnier, and less smelly version of myself?

[alwaysmpe]

Re: Ergo

What is your Internet birthday, and why is it Jan 1st 1970?

[jake]

Re: Ergo

When idiots ask me my age for no good reason, I generally tell them that I was born on February 29th, 1904 (the actual birthday of a family friend, RIP). Probably doesn't do much as a protest, but it gets me past the computer gatekeeper and hopefully manages to corrupt a marketing database occasionally.

[Old Used Programmer]

Re: Ergo

Be a lot better to claim 29 Feb 1900. If their date routines choke on it, just claim to have been born in a country that was still on the Julian calendar. There are several to choose from.

[John Brown (no body)]

Confused?

a message from Bright Data citing the business relationship between the two firms: "Meta has long been a valued client of our proxy and scraping services for at least the last six years."

So, in a legal filing, with the publicly accessible bit redacted in their own claim, made visible in the Facebook claims, Bright Data don't seem to be able to check the status of their client. Facebook, and definitively state when the contract started, give or take about a year? Don't they keep proper records of contracts and payments?

That doesn't bode well for Bright Datas side of the case. Although I'd be happy for this one to run on and on for years through higher and higher courts, even if it does mean the lawyers get rich since it'll be two "scum sucking bottom feeders" duking it out at their own expense.

[jake]

You just can't make this shit up.

One wonders why anyone, anywhere, trusts any of these shysters with anything important.

[Inventor of the Marmite Laser]

Re: You just can't make this shit up.

One wonders why anyone, anywhere, trusts any of these shysters with anything at all. TFTFY

[jake]

Re: You just can't make this shit up.

I thought about going there... but I trust them to fuck up, I trust them to shamelessly rip people off, I trust them to be the laughing stock, I trust them to spend small fortunes on garbage on a regular basis, I trust them to hire and fire on the basis of the SJW trend du jour instead of on technical merit, I trust them to own as many lobbyists as possible, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

Social ad behemoth insists what it does it okay ... and what others do is not

Works for the Catholic church.

[Potemkine!]

Works for all people wanting to impose their moral views.

[Anonymous Coward]

Meta, your hypocracy is showing

"Bright Data was stealing people’s personal info and selling it; that’s not okay..." Yeah, we don't like it when others take what we rightfully stole first!

[GloriousVictoryForThePeople]

"This case is all about public data: whether the public has the right to search public information,

Since when are paid creepers, "the public"?

[MrDamage]

> Since when are paid creepers, "the public"?

I know you may not like it, but politicians are considered to be members of the public too.

[Pascal Monett]

"Meta paid Bright Data to scrape data from other websites"

Yes. From other websites. Not from Facebook/Instagram.

You don't need to scrape from Facebook, Meta is already doing that.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I hear loud scraping noises from elsewhere.....???

....say, Cupertino, Fort Meade, Cheltenham, Beijing......in fact loud scraping noises almost anywhere there's an internet presence......

....that would be........................EVERYWHERE!!!

Isn't this news item simply more MISDIRECTION?

I think we should be told!

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't it fun..

.. when two privacy criminals argue?

That said, this case is not about either of them ending what they're doing. The only people winning here are the lawyers, but at least there is some disclosure.

[KittenHuffer]

Pot! Kettle!

Colo(u)r check please!!!!

[Jonjonz]

As if F*ckUBook actually does not know that a good portion of its accounts are fake.

If it is available to the public, its game.

Only a cadre of costly lawyers and ever clue less judicial officials can not see that.

[captain veg]

If you don't want it scraped, don't serve it from your web site.

You would think these people ought to know *something* about HTTP.

-A.

[jake]

Actually, no. I wouldn't expect the idiots making these decisions to even know how to read their own email, much less anything as esoteric as how HTTP works.