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And this is why scraping is under technical and legal attack. To maintain their panopticon, where they see all, while you get only a pinhole view of, in this ca

And this is why scraping is under technical and legal attack. To maintain their panopticon, where they see all, while you get only a pinhole view of, in this case, the economy.

Aurornis 3y ago
Scraping is huge business for people who don’t have your best interests in mind, too. There are many businesses built on the idea of gathering as much of people’s data as they can find in the public internet and selling it to anyone willing to pay. Contrary to what many people thing, Facebook, Google, and other companies do not sell your data! They are ad companies that use their private data to target ads, but they aren’t selling it to 3rd parties likely many people have been led to believe. This has created a market opening for nefarious companies to scrape these websites, compile the data, and sell it to everyone from police to governments to spammers. I’m not saying there’s a right answer to regulation, but it’s incorrect to say that scrapers are always the good actors championing the public’s best interests.
- ethbr1 3y ago
  > Scraping is huge business for people who don’t have your best interests in mind, too. I liked how the thread observed that competitor supermarkets were rapidly converging prices on adjustments. And assumed this meant collusion. Why collude when you can just hire grey-market high frequency scrapers to detect your competitors' repricing and trigger your own?
  - SenAnder 3y ago
    Looking at supermarket (or any) prices, publicly posted, in-store or online, is not remotely grey market.
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      Scraping them with high fidelity and frequency, and then selling that data commercially... and then buying that data from a provider and updating your prices using them... Probably isn't something a company with potential monopoly concerns (read: Walmart et al.) would want be be overly open about.
  - __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    I haven't seen one in a while, but this sort of thing used to go off the rails on amazon. I tried to buy a 10 trillion dollar chair--presumably algorithmically priced--but the checkout process broke before I could see what the CC company would say about it.
  - jorams 3y ago
    > Why collude when you can just hire grey-market high frequency scrapers to detect your competitors' repricing and trigger your own? What the thread actually said is this: > My guess was: tacit collusion, meaning, oligopolic price coordination without explicit coordination. Which is what you described.
- dylan604 3y ago
  >Facebook, Google, and other companies do not sell your data! this does not excuse the pervasive tracking that occurs by "we collect for internal purposes only" vs "we sell to anyone". an invasion of privacy is still an invasion of privacy whether they do it for their own fetish purposes or distributing it to the public.
- gdulli 3y ago
  They absolutely do sell your data, they just launder it through various ad tech obfuscations to achieve a veneer of anonymization.
- SenAnder 3y ago
  And cameras are used by stalkers as well. But when a prolific photographer, growing rich off their trade, tries to control what others are allowed to photograph, I won't assume they're doing it out of concern for my well-being. I don't want Google or Facebook to have my data either, yet they've done their best to gather everyone's with various trackers, not just data posted voluntarily to their platforms. They don't have to sell it - they are the threat too.

And this is why scraping is under technical and legal attack. To maintain their panopticon, where they see all, while you get only a pinhole view of, in this case, the economy.

Aurornis 3y ago

Scraping is huge business for people who don’t have your best interests in mind, too. There are many businesses built on the idea of gathering as much of people’s data as they can find in the public internet and selling it to anyone willing to pay. Contrary to what many people thing, Facebook, Google, and other companies do not sell your data! They are ad companies that use their private data to target ads, but they aren’t selling it to 3rd parties likely many people have been led to believe. This has created a market opening for nefarious companies to scrape these websites, compile the data, and sell it to everyone from police to governments to spammers. I’m not saying there’s a right answer to regulation, but it’s incorrect to say that scrapers are always the good actors championing the public’s best interests.

ethbr1 3y ago
> Scraping is huge business for people who don’t have your best interests in mind, too. I liked how the thread observed that competitor supermarkets were rapidly converging prices on adjustments. And assumed this meant collusion. Why collude when you can just hire grey-market high frequency scrapers to detect your competitors' repricing and trigger your own?
- SenAnder 3y ago
  Looking at supermarket (or any) prices, publicly posted, in-store or online, is not remotely grey market.
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    Scraping them with high fidelity and frequency, and then selling that data commercially... and then buying that data from a provider and updating your prices using them... Probably isn't something a company with potential monopoly concerns (read: Walmart et al.) would want be be overly open about.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I haven't seen one in a while, but this sort of thing used to go off the rails on amazon. I tried to buy a 10 trillion dollar chair--presumably algorithmically priced--but the checkout process broke before I could see what the CC company would say about it.
- jorams 3y ago
  > Why collude when you can just hire grey-market high frequency scrapers to detect your competitors' repricing and trigger your own? What the thread actually said is this: > My guess was: tacit collusion, meaning, oligopolic price coordination without explicit coordination. Which is what you described.
dylan604 3y ago
>Facebook, Google, and other companies do not sell your data! this does not excuse the pervasive tracking that occurs by "we collect for internal purposes only" vs "we sell to anyone". an invasion of privacy is still an invasion of privacy whether they do it for their own fetish purposes or distributing it to the public.
gdulli 3y ago
They absolutely do sell your data, they just launder it through various ad tech obfuscations to achieve a veneer of anonymization.
SenAnder 3y ago
And cameras are used by stalkers as well. But when a prolific photographer, growing rich off their trade, tries to control what others are allowed to photograph, I won't assume they're doing it out of concern for my well-being. I don't want Google or Facebook to have my data either, yet they've done their best to gather everyone's with various trackers, not just data posted voluntarily to their platforms. They don't have to sell it - they are the threat too.