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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 deci

• nkozyra 2mo ago
  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.
  • stymaar 2mo ago
    How can an automated process be a party in the terms of services though?
    • nkozyra 2mo ago
      > 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.
      • stymaar 2mo ago
        > If it's auth-gated, it needs to be, well, authenticated. AFAIK, there isn't an single auth scheme on earth that guarantee human intervention[1]. Anyone can set-up a robot creating new users on a whim using single-use email addresses and even phone numbers. In fact, we know that OpenAI's agent have been doing exactly that when attacking Rubygem. And all AI labs are likely doing it for scrapping social media as well. Who are you gonna sue then? [1] the closest thing is Altman iris scanning venture, but without a broad adoption it's remains functionally useless.
        • immibis2 2mo ago
          By setting that up, you take on the liability for it. The defendant is whoever set it up. No different from "if I roll a car down a hill and it hits something at the bottom, how can you hold the car liable?"
          • stymaar 2mo ago
            That's not how ToS work though. ToS are contracts. If you don't sign the contract nobody can sue you for violating it. > No different from "if I roll a car down a hill and it hits something at the bottom, how can you hold the car liable?" That's the difference between criminal and civil justice. You don't need to sign a law for it to bind you, but for contracts you do.
            • nkozyra 2mo ago
              > If you don't sign the contract nobody can sue you for violating it. But terms of service are contracts which you sign by agreeing. Courts have looked somewhat favorably on "I didn't read that" defenses, but accepting the agreement is a legal contract between you and the service provider.
              • stymaar 2mo ago
                My point is that you don't have to accept anything.
                • nkozyra 2mo ago
                  Sure. But then you don't get credentials and can't scrape.
                  • lazide 2mo ago
                    Even if you get the credentials via middle man?
                  • 2mo ago
  • immibis2 2mo ago
    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.
    • j-bos 2mo ago
      cfaa has broad interpretations
      • immibis2 2mo ago
        AFAIK it's been interpreted that getting public data while being someone the data holder doesn't like is, unusually, one of the very few things that is not a CFAA violation. Bright Data vs X for example.
        • hunter2_ 2mo ago
          So long as the "getting" doesn't consist of circumventing something that is ostensibly a security mechanism, such as a URL that had never been presented to you by the server but is fairly easily guessed.
        • mitxela 2mo ago
          You mean vs Meta
• deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
• fsckboy 2mo ago
  >I'm not sure what Twitter's specific reasons are as I recall it was the large number of bot accounts not scraping but commenting.