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550 points polskibus | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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jordan801 ◴[] No.19116099[source]
Anyone who has written a few scrappers knows how brutally ineffective this is. Yelp tried to pull the same thing and it took me about 3 minutes to rectify my "for fun" scraper. It's also really not that difficult to write a smart scraper that you say, "Look for these things in this post. However you find them, replicate it for the others". Which is ultimately what I made my Yelp scraper do.

If there's a pattern, I will find it, and I will exploit it. <3

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eeeeeeeeeeeee ◴[] No.19116147[source]
Yep, seems like a total waste of time. The people scraping will spend the necessary time to get around this (and then distribute that knowledge to the masses) so it seems like a pointless arms race. Facebook employees could better use their time on developing actual features that bring value.
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1. SketchySeaBeast ◴[] No.19116413[source]
> Facebook employees could better use their time on developing actual features that bring value.

The problem here of course is that circumventing the ad blocking is the most direct way Facebook can find value.