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Let’s not pretend this is a pure win. There are good uses of web scraping, like Archive.org trying to preserve the web. But what HiQ is doing is looking at publ
by jakelazaroff 7y ago
Let’s not pretend this is a pure win. There are good uses of web scraping, like Archive.org trying to preserve the web. But what HiQ is doing is looking at public LinkedIn profiles and then snitching to employers if they think an employee is searching for a new job.
It’s easy to blanket say “web scraping is legal, do what you will“. The tricky part is protecting people’s public data while not giving a huge moat to giant corporations who control it.
- wtetzner 7y agoThat's the thing. Web scraping isn't really the problem here. It's what companies are doing with personal information. If LinkedIn started doing the same thing as HiQ, it would be just as bad (probably worse), but the legality of web scraping is irrelevant to that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jakelazaroff 7y agoThat's a good point, and we certainly should write our data protection laws to prevent LinkedIn from doing the same thing — but there's a crucial difference between the two. I've consented to give my data to LinkedIn, and I can withdraw my consent and data if they start doing something I don't like. On the other hand, hiQ has vacuumed up my data without my consent, and there's really no way for me to stop them other than retreating from my public profile. Certainly the legality of web scraping is relevant to that.
- wtetzner 7y agoI guess that's the issue. We need laws to control what companies can do with personal information, even if it happens to be publicly available. I don't think scraping itself is really the issue. If you used mechanical turk to hire a bunch of people to go look and user profiles and write down information about them, you'd have the same problem.