Coinspeaker
Twitter Parent X Corp Sues Unidentified Defendants for Scraping and Compromising User Data
X Corp, the parent company of social media giant Twitter, has filed a lawsuit against a few defendants, accusing them of data scraping on Twitter. X Corp is seeking over $1 million in damages.
Filed in the Dallas County District Court in Texas, the lawsuit is against four defendants who allegedly used data processing companies in the county to scrape data from Twitter. So far, X Corp has not identified the defendants and is using IP addresses instead.
Data scraping is the act of pulling information off a website using specialized computer programs or bots. Data scraping in the US is legal if the information is publicly available. The US Ninth Circuit of Appeals judged a 2022 case brought by LinkedIn, concluding that the act is legal if the source is public, and reaffirmed its decision after the Supreme Court sent back the case following the defendant’s appeal. LinkedIn had accused hiQ Labs of scraping public information from the business and employment website.
According to the filing, X Corp identified the IP addresses and noticed they flooded Twitter’s sign-up page with automated requests. The filing states:
“The volume of these requests far exceeded what any single individual could send to a server in a given period and clearly indicated that these automated requests were aimed at scraping data from Twitter. These requests have severely taxed X Corp.’s servers and impaired the user experience for millions of X Corp.’s customers.”
The lawsuit also states that the scraping profits off X Corp and compromises user data while ignoring the company’s Terms of Service.
X Corp Scraping Lawsuit Follows Earlier Twitter Access Limit
Early last month, Twitter began limiting the number of tweets users could see each day. Owner Elon Musk announced in a July 1 tweet that unverified users have a daily limit of 600 tweets, new unverified accounts get 300, while Twitter Blue subscribers get 6000 tweets. Musk explained in the tweet that the limits were introduced to “address extreme levels of data scraping and system manipulation”. Following backlash, Musk later increased the limits to 1,000 and 10,000 tweets per day for verified and unverified users, respectively.
Industry experts had tackled the announcement, expressing concerns that the limits could undermine CEO Linda Yaccarino’s efforts to attract new advertisers. However, Yaccarino defended the decision in a tweet explaining that “big moves” are necessary to strengthen Twitter. In an official blog post, Twitter explained that the limit was crucial to prevent data scraping used for building AI models and manipulating people and conversations.
Following the announcement, rival social media platform Bluesky recorded heavy traffic as Twitter users sought less restrictive alternatives. The Jack Dorsey-backed Bluesky eventually suspended sign-ups due to the spike.
Another rival, Mastodon, also reported a huge traffic surge. CEO and creator Eugen Rochko said on July 2, a day after Musk’s announcement, that Mastodon’s active user count spiked by at least 110,000.
Twitter Parent X Corp Sues Unidentified Defendants for Scraping and Compromising User Data
