Comment by ndiddy
2 hours ago
I'm not sure what Twitter's specific reasons are, but AFAIK the general trend of login-walling services over the past few years has happened due to a court decision saying that it's legal to scrape publicly available data ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiQ_Labs_v._LinkedIn ). If they gate content behind a login wall and put a clause in the EULA forbidding scraping, this lets them use the CFAA to go after anybody who still scrapes the site.
Effectively it forces scrapers to become a party to the terms of service, which usually contains the "no programmatic access (other than via paid API)" or specifically prohibits automated scraping.
Breaking terms of service isn't a crime, at least, although the company is legally permitted to retaliate against it, such as by banning you.
How can an automated process be a party in the terms of services though?
> How can an automated process be a party in the terms of services though?
If it's auth-gated, it needs to be, well, authenticated.
The person who provides that, and the subsequent automated scraping, is the party, and would be the recipient of a civil suit.
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