Musk’s X Corp. sues data scrapers for “severely taxing” Twitter’s servers

[6LLvveMx2koXfwn]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/musk-sues-data-scrapers-blames-them-for-twitters-impaired-user-experience/

[martin8412]

How can four Linode servers produce enough load to "severely tax" Twitter servers? Not to mention that customers of Linode can be pretty much anywhere in the world, so good luck even getting the case going.

The suit in itself seems bogus. Scraping is perfectly legal as long as you don't collect PII or copyrighted material.

[3cats-in-a-coat → martin8412]

The true purpose of the lawsuit appears to be so the server hosting reveals the name of their customers behind those IP addresses.

It's doubtful the scrape rate was that high all of a sudden. However Musk needs money. And excuses to get them.

[martin8412 → 3cats-in-a-coat]

Linode will probably hand over the names if sufficiently pressured, but even then. Non-US citizen has a near zero risk of ever paying a dime. Even US citizens will probably be fine.

Scraping is perfectly legal.

[3cats-in-a-coat → martin8412]

Scraping is legal, but I'm sure Elon just wants to know who it is from this.

The lawsuit also sues for "taxing/degrading user experience" so they're trying to not position it as "they scraped us".

Once he knows who it is, he'll probably try to pressure them more based on the product they've made with the tweets. If any.

He's paranoid everyone is stealing his tweets and making super-profitable AIs with them.

[etchalon]

It's odd they're suing for release of customer information behind 4 specific IPs. If they knew the 4 specific IPs were degrading the experience, they could easily block them.