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John Cougar Misanthrope's avatar

Great breakdown on Twitter and the data scraping topic, Mr. Childers. This is my professional sphere but yours is the best explanation I have read so far.

I suspect this activity is taking place here on Substack as many will recall the 'Hannah Williams' bot randomly 'liking' comments a few months ago. I've learned to use the block feature on Substack liberally but I'm still not sure what it actually does.

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Emil's avatar

Seems like limiting data scraping is a good thing. And it is hard to see why real people would be complaining anyway. 10,000 tweets a day! That means looking at tweets your entire day! Elon is doing Twitter-addicted people a favor. There is a whole wonderful world out there people. Look up from your phone!

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Susan Banks's avatar

Yes!!! I’m telling all these young kids to go to school to be neck doctors because we will need it! Everyone’s head is down on their phone!! I hate it!!

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RunningLogic's avatar

Great advice 😁😆 Chiropractors too!

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walk2write's avatar

Massage therapists and fitness trainers can help a lot with the neck and shoulder problems.

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Shy Boy's avatar

Scraping is strictly for those too cheap to use the official backdoors:

https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api/enterprise

Elon just wants his big customers to cough up some dough.

The spooks can still (ab)use the FISA backdoors. They always will. That's a big part of why there even is such a thing as Twitter.

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Agent-86's avatar

Exactly, and here is their biggest enterprise customer, which is no surprise.

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/bb-google-scrape-everything-post-online-ai/

Methinks these limits will not apply to their enterprise customers with their paid for back doors.

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Agent-86's avatar

Scraping is for retail customers, and direct DB exporting is for their wholesale enterprise customers? Little or nothing has probably changed from what was exposed in the 'Twit Files'.

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Gigi Gummerson's avatar

Exactly what I thought. I don’t know how you’d get through 1000 in a day but I’m a casual user.

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GreaterIsrahell's avatar

A thousand tweets/day x a thousand accounts = 1.000.000 scrapes. Multiply again with the actuall number, and you get an astronomic result.

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FH's avatar

Yup!!! And here’s a video eloquently making that point, about 4 minutes: https://youtu.be/QugooaNRnsk

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LS Woodruff's avatar

Similar to how I view the captured masses, so incredibly tragic.

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CuiBono?'s avatar

My thoughts exactly. Wow?!

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Freedom Fox's avatar

Jeff does a great presentation here of the Twitter (and others) data scraping! Thank you! Conservative Treehouse is a fantastic resource for truth-seekers. Run by Sundance, who always shares great analysis and deep dives of issues of our time. I like seeing his long and Jeff's short form insights regularly. Here's his take on same subject:

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2023/07/01/elon-musk-is-self-immolating-on-twitter-and-being-disingenuous-about-the-reasoning/

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Willing Spirit's avatar

Ha! I knew someone would have already reposted this. But anything posted by Sundance deserves many reposting💥

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Brandon is not your bro's avatar

John Cougar Misanthrope... it’s on substack already . A few substack writers refused to acknowledge it.

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Brandon is not your bro's avatar

PS … One told me “ it’s great entertainment “. ( pss.. then the stack writer should not write such serious prolific writing) .

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Ami's avatar

If the data scraping bots increase their number of accounts to do the scraping, can they not still collect all the data, although a bit slower perhaps? Will the limits accomplish what the outcome wanted?

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Agent-86's avatar

Yes, that sounds like one way around the account limits.

Also, Twit gets paid by the spook agencies anyway, so their added cost is not a concern.

In return for their paid accounts the limits may not apply to the spook accounts either?

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SomeDude's avatar

not sure when they rolled out blocking on here but I've definitely used the feature since I saw it.

would've used it a lot more if it'd been implemented sooner

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RunningLogic's avatar

Yes, great example! I haven’t figured out how to block anyone but that may be because I’m not a paying subscriber?

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John Cougar Misanthrope's avatar

Click the link on a particular commenter's name. That will take you to their page. Click on the three dots to the right of their name and you will be given options to follow them, mute them, and/or block them.

Again, I'm not sure what these features actually do. I was hoping that muting someone meant that I would no longer see their posts but it doesn't appear to work that way.

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Willing Spirit's avatar

I just clicked on your name, saw your page, but no 3 dots to the right.

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Willing Spirit's avatar

However I clicked on Running Logic, saw three dots, but only got to report; and I would never do that to such a logical person…

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SadieJay's avatar

I see the 3 dots after a comment on here and can report someone. I can block comments and people on my blog as the writer.

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