Scraping the open web is NOT the same as accessing privileged APIs to collect private information. If LinkedIn made their pages accessible to anyone as a sort of public service (as they used to), people would think twice what data to put on there.

The problem is the same as with Facebook: they pretend the data is private and secure, then let people siphon it away. Public and private networks are both fine, but huge corporations trying to mix both usually end up with the worst of both worlds.

It is easy for hacker(s) to claim they got this data from scraping. From the article, we can't be confident that this is true (completely or in part).

> Where are all the folks who were complaining about the LinkedIn anti-scraping court case destroying the open web? This is what LinkedIn is fighting against.

I find comments of the form "where are all the folks who were complaining..." to be tiresome. Asking "where are all the folks" suggest that "all the folks" don't exist because... you don't see them on Hacker News? ... because ... you want to make a dig at LinkedIn? ... because [reasons]?

Unless I'm missing something (let me know), this comment seems like a rant based on speculation. Why believe a hacker who says they got this from scraping?

I'm not defending LinkedIn, to be clear. I'm asking for more {elaboration, logic, specificity} and less rhetoric in the comments here.

You want to defend a company that uses shitty dark patterns?