Facebook Settles “Significant” Lawsuit Against Two Companies Scraping User Data

Facebook’s business model relies on collecting as much of our data as possible to monetize it for advertising revenue. Perhaps that’s why the social media giant takes it so seriously when third-party companies step on its toes and scrape our data themselves. For instance, this week, the company announced that it settled a lawsuit for a “significant” sum of money against two businesses that were scraping Facebook and Instagram user data.

One of these businesses, BrandTotal, offered real-time competitive intelligence on social media strategy and paid campaigns. The other, Unimania, said it could help users view social media platforms anonymously. According to the proposed settlement, both companies have agreed to stop scraping data and pay monetary damages as part of a significant settlement. The two companies also agreed to delete their software and code and said they won’t sell any data they collected through their operations.

However, despite this successful outcome for user privacy, there may be more challenges ahead. A U.S. federal court recently ruled that data scraping is perfectly legal, though it did not comment on whether the practice could violate a company like Facebook’s terms of service. But with such a vague ruling, more data scrapers like the two companies in this settlement could feel emboldened to try their hand.




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