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I despise Musk as much as anyone else and charging for API access has hurt a lot of valuable use cases like improving accessibility but … how about not massive

I despise Musk as much as anyone else and charging for API access has hurt a lot of valuable use cases like improving accessibility but … how about not massive scraping a site that doesn’t want you to?

bmitc 3y ago
Does Twitter have that same approach with user data?
watwut 3y ago
And yet people do. Kind of predicting what various people react including scammers, bots, scrapper and what not is, like, job of a management in a company like this.
ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 3y ago
Oh shit you solved the problem
TechBro8615 3y ago
This isn't going to make them stop either. Musk is about to see a spike in account creations using the method of lowest resistance. I expect "sign in with apple" will disappear as an option soon, given its requirement of supporting "hide my email" that makes it trivial to create multiple twitter profiles from one apple ID.
- nrb 3y ago
  This works in his favor though, more accounts means higher ad rev and MAU for valuation.
  - masklinn 3y ago
    Higher ad rev only until the advertisers realise your users don’t buy anything and ads are wasted and your ARPU drops through the floor.
masklinn 3y ago
It’s funny how being a locust is cool when you’re doing it, and a problem when others do it in a way which affects you.
9935c101ab17a66 3y ago
Scraping isn’t illegal, and to be honest, I’m not even sure it’s unethical. I’m assuming you think it so — if so, why? I’m not disagreeing, but haven’t given it much thought.
- pmlnr 3y ago
  > I’m not even sure it’s unethical. If it doesn't respect robots.txt, it is unethical.
  - dizhn 3y ago
    No means no ! :)
  - threeseed 3y ago
    a) It looks to be permitted according to Twitter's robots.txt b) Given Twitter is public, user generated content which they don't own but simply have a license I wouldn't call it unethical in the slightest.
    - AmericanChopper 3y ago
      If the background of the issue is as Musk described, then it certainly is not allowed by twitter’s robots.txt, which allows a maximum of one request per second. I do a lot of data scraping, so I’m sympathetic to the people who want to do it, but violating the robots.txt (or other published policies) is absolutely unethical, regardless of the license of the content the service is hosting. Another way of describing an unauthorised usecase taking a service offline is a denial of service attack, which (again, if Musk’s description of the problem is accurate) seems to be the issue Twitter was facing, with a choice between restricting services or scaling forever to meet the scrapers requirements. Personally I would have probably tried to start with a captcha, but all this dogpiling just looks like low effort Musk hate. The prevailing sentiment on HN has become so passionately anti-Musk that it’s hard to view any criticism of him or Twitter here with any credibility.
  - echelon 3y ago
okeuro49 3y ago
> I despise Musk as much as anyone else I don't despise Musk at all. Don't agree with him on everything, but he is a genuine and interesting person.
- martindbp 3y ago
  He holds views that were the progressive norm 15 years ago, which are now considered bigoted, this is considered unacceptable today. There's a lot I don't agree with him on, like Ukraine, but "despise" is a word I reserve for the likes of Putin.
  - valval 3y ago
    I don’t think Putin is the epitome of evil that the west portray him to be either. War is hell and he surely started the larger scale war, but just remember that you’ve probably been introduced to less than 1% of his side of things as a western citizen. The western world has gone to war many, many times in history for lesser reasons.
    - sd1010 3y ago
      [dead]
    - yks 3y ago
      I’ll rephrase your argument for you: “Why don’t you listen to the rapist’s opinion? The victim is surely not blameless. Besides, your cousin is a shoplifter”.
      - benjaminwootton 3y ago
        Is this really the best response you could put forward in to people trying to make a nuanced point?
        CyberDildonics 3y ago
        Nuanced point? That person just said 'sure, putin is committing genocide and destroying an entire country, but we haven't heard his side of the story' Then they followed it up with the old hacker news chestnut of 'whatabout the west'
smcl 3y ago
You might want to think twice about taking him at face value then. He says it’s about scraping but who knows anymore
naasking 3y ago
> I despise Musk as much as anyone else It's interesting how you assume that most people despise Musk.

bmitc 3y ago

Does Twitter have that same approach with user data?

watwut 3y ago

And yet people do. Kind of predicting what various people react including scammers, bots, scrapper and what not is, like, job of a management in a company like this.

ukFxqnLa2sBSBf6 3y ago

Oh shit you solved the problem

TechBro8615 3y ago

This isn't going to make them stop either. Musk is about to see a spike in account creations using the method of lowest resistance. I expect "sign in with apple" will disappear as an option soon, given its requirement of supporting "hide my email" that makes it trivial to create multiple twitter profiles from one apple ID.

nrb 3y ago
This works in his favor though, more accounts means higher ad rev and MAU for valuation.
- masklinn 3y ago
  Higher ad rev only until the advertisers realise your users don’t buy anything and ads are wasted and your ARPU drops through the floor.

masklinn 3y ago

It’s funny how being a locust is cool when you’re doing it, and a problem when others do it in a way which affects you.

9935c101ab17a66 3y ago

Scraping isn’t illegal, and to be honest, I’m not even sure it’s unethical. I’m assuming you think it so — if so, why? I’m not disagreeing, but haven’t given it much thought.

pmlnr 3y ago
> I’m not even sure it’s unethical. If it doesn't respect robots.txt, it is unethical.
- dizhn 3y ago
  No means no ! :)
- threeseed 3y ago
  a) It looks to be permitted according to Twitter's robots.txt b) Given Twitter is public, user generated content which they don't own but simply have a license I wouldn't call it unethical in the slightest.
  - AmericanChopper 3y ago
    If the background of the issue is as Musk described, then it certainly is not allowed by twitter’s robots.txt, which allows a maximum of one request per second. I do a lot of data scraping, so I’m sympathetic to the people who want to do it, but violating the robots.txt (or other published policies) is absolutely unethical, regardless of the license of the content the service is hosting. Another way of describing an unauthorised usecase taking a service offline is a denial of service attack, which (again, if Musk’s description of the problem is accurate) seems to be the issue Twitter was facing, with a choice between restricting services or scaling forever to meet the scrapers requirements. Personally I would have probably tried to start with a captcha, but all this dogpiling just looks like low effort Musk hate. The prevailing sentiment on HN has become so passionately anti-Musk that it’s hard to view any criticism of him or Twitter here with any credibility.
- echelon 3y ago

okeuro49 3y ago

> I despise Musk as much as anyone else I don't despise Musk at all. Don't agree with him on everything, but he is a genuine and interesting person.

martindbp 3y ago
He holds views that were the progressive norm 15 years ago, which are now considered bigoted, this is considered unacceptable today. There's a lot I don't agree with him on, like Ukraine, but "despise" is a word I reserve for the likes of Putin.
- valval 3y ago
  I don’t think Putin is the epitome of evil that the west portray him to be either. War is hell and he surely started the larger scale war, but just remember that you’ve probably been introduced to less than 1% of his side of things as a western citizen. The western world has gone to war many, many times in history for lesser reasons.
  - sd1010 3y ago
    [dead]
  - yks 3y ago
    I’ll rephrase your argument for you: “Why don’t you listen to the rapist’s opinion? The victim is surely not blameless. Besides, your cousin is a shoplifter”.
    - benjaminwootton 3y ago
      Is this really the best response you could put forward in to people trying to make a nuanced point?
      - CyberDildonics 3y ago
        Nuanced point? That person just said 'sure, putin is committing genocide and destroying an entire country, but we haven't heard his side of the story' Then they followed it up with the old hacker news chestnut of 'whatabout the west'

smcl 3y ago

You might want to think twice about taking him at face value then. He says it’s about scraping but who knows anymore

naasking 3y ago

> I despise Musk as much as anyone else It's interesting how you assume that most people despise Musk.