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I am, in general, strongly of the opinion that legal blocks to web scraping are ridiculous and a Bad Thing. That said, ever since I added some invisible unicod

by chias 3y ago

I am, in general, strongly of the opinion that legal blocks to web scraping are ridiculous and a Bad Thing. That said, ever since I added some invisible unicode characters into my name on LinkedIn and can see the fraction of spam that I receive that addresses me with a bunch of `?`s where I put the invisible characters is rather astounding. Probably half the garbage email I get has clearly scraped my name from LinkedIn. All that to say: if you're someone who feels affronted that you aren't allowed to scrape LinkedIn, and you try to garner my sympathy about the situation, please accept my invitation to get stuffed.

x0x0 3y ago
I couldn't disagree more re: legal blocks are ridiculous, and this is a very pro-privacy decision. I shared info on LinkedIn for use by myself and other linkedin members, and for linkedin to use in their various products. You can't be pro-privacy and simultaneously believe that my putting info on LI has granted the entire world license to do with it what they will. Including running research programs or ML stuff or whatever hiq's business was, selling it to spammers, and using it in products by other companies that I've never heard of.
- Genghis_Khan 3y ago
  > You can't be pro-privacy and simultaneously believe ... You gave information to LI, trusting that they wouldn't disclose it to people you wouldn't want to have it. Meanwhile, untrustworthy third parties were free to view that very same information. Blame LI for being casual with data about you. Blame yourself for trusting LI. Don't blame others for reading what they were free to read.
  - x0x0 3y ago
    That's simply wrong -- this went well beyond HiQ could read. HiQ's claim is that LI shouldn't be allowed to prevent HiQ from reading data that I had no intention or interest in sharing with HiQ, simply because LI makes it available to other LI users. It's wildly anti-privacy to claim that because I shared data with LI, and LI put some piece of it on the website, that HiQ has a right to read it and use it for arbitrary things.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

by chias 3y ago

x0x0 3y ago

I couldn't disagree more re: legal blocks are ridiculous, and this is a very pro-privacy decision. I shared info on LinkedIn for use by myself and other linkedin members, and for linkedin to use in their various products. You can't be pro-privacy and simultaneously believe that my putting info on LI has granted the entire world license to do with it what they will. Including running research programs or ML stuff or whatever hiq's business was, selling it to spammers, and using it in products by other companies that I've never heard of.

Genghis_Khan 3y ago
> You can't be pro-privacy and simultaneously believe ... You gave information to LI, trusting that they wouldn't disclose it to people you wouldn't want to have it. Meanwhile, untrustworthy third parties were free to view that very same information. Blame LI for being casual with data about you. Blame yourself for trusting LI. Don't blame others for reading what they were free to read.
- x0x0 3y ago
  That's simply wrong -- this went well beyond HiQ could read. HiQ's claim is that LI shouldn't be allowed to prevent HiQ from reading data that I had no intention or interest in sharing with HiQ, simply because LI makes it available to other LI users. It's wildly anti-privacy to claim that because I shared data with LI, and LI put some piece of it on the website, that HiQ has a right to read it and use it for arbitrary things.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]