Twitter's parent company X sued four people for ``damaging data scraping on Twitter'' and sought damages of over 130 million yen

On July 6, 2023, Twitter's parent company X sued four anonymous individuals for `` scraping and damaging Twitter user data''. In a complaint filed in federal district court in Dallas County, Texas, X alleges that it 'illegally scraped data related to residents of Texas,' and $1 million against the defendant. ) and seeks compensation for damages above.

X CORP v. JOHN DOE 1, et al :: District Court of Dallas County, Texas :: Federal Court Proceeding No. DC-23-09157
https://www.plainsite.org/dockets/50n1oahec/district-court-of-dallas-county-texas/x-corp-v-john-doe-1-et-al/

Twitter company files lawsuit against data scrapers in Dallas | wfaa.com
https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/elon-musks-x-corp-files-lawsuit-against-four-unknown-dallas-residents-data-scraping-twitter/287-d30d1cb0-3dbf- 43e6-aae7-d9b437475183

Elon Musk-owned Twitter files data-scraping lawsuit against unknowns
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/13/elon-musk-owned-twitter-files-data-scraping-lawsuit-against-unknowns.html

Musk's X Corp. sues data scrapers for “severely taxing” Twitter's servers | Ars Technica
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/musk-sues-data-scrapers-blames-them-for-twitters-impaired-user-experience/

X sued four anonymous people named 'John Doe (name referring to anonymous individuals) 1 to 4' in the complaint. The four, identified only by IP address, allegedly illegally scraped user data in violation of Twitter's terms of service .

Data scraping is the act of collecting data from publicly accessible websites by automated programs. The collected data can be used for a variety of purposes, such as training large language models and targeting online advertising.

X said, ``Scraping reduces the processing power of the server with millions of requests, impairs the user experience of real users, and interferes with the legitimate operation of Twitter's website and mobile apps.'' ``Twitter users We have no control over how data scraping companies repackage and sell personal information.' 'Data scraping companies profit from innovations of companies like X, while harming X and causing user data By illegally scraping data, the defendants are blatantly disregarding X's Terms of Service as well as Twitter users' privacy settings.'

X has taken measures to prevent unauthorized data scraping on Twitter, one of which is the tweet viewing restriction that occurred in early July 2023.

Twitter sets a limit on the number of tweets that can be viewed per day, Elon Mask explains the reason as ``to deal with extreme scraping''-GIGAZINE

In reply to a tweet reporting on the lawsuit, Musk said, ``Some organizations tried to collect all the tweets ever made in a short period of time. says.

Several entities tried to scrape every tweet ever made in a short period of time. That is why we had to put rate limits in place.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 13, 2023

The restrictions on viewing tweets, which were set without prior notice, caused havoc on Twitter, and many Twitter users began looking for SNS to move to. In response to this, Meta hastened the release of Instagram-based Twitter-like SNS Threads , and it is reported that the number of new registrants exceeded 30 million in just one day.

Recent requests from IPs, including defendant's, have put a particularly severe strain on servers, resulting in a poor experience for millions of users and hurting X. X claimed that the profits derived from such data scraping were unjustified and sought over $1 million in damages from the defendants.

The complaint was filed in federal district court in Dallas County because the defendant contracted with a data processor in Dallas County. Since X has identified more IP addresses as data scrapers, similar complaints may be filed against data scrapers operating in other regions.

In addition, in a lawsuit filed against hiQ Labs, a company-supported startup that scraped public data by LinkedIn, a business-specific SNS, in 2022, the ruling that ``scraping of public data is legally acceptable'' was made. It has been.

The appeals court again decided that there is no problem with scraping that automatically extracts public information on the Internet - GIGAZINE