SAN FRANCISCO (CN) — A federal judge ruled Tuesday afternoon that a data scraping company did not violate Meta’s terms of use when it scraped data from Facebook and Instagram, denying Meta’s motion for summary judgment on breach of contract claims.
The social media giant sued Israel-based web scraper Bright Data in 2023, accusing the company of violating Facebook and Instagram’s terms of service and policies by scraping data from both sites even though Meta has paid Bright Data to scrape data from other sites in the past.
Meta claims Bright Data developed and used automation software to scrape users' profile information, followers and posts from Facebook and Instagram. Bright Data then sold the scraped data and developed and sold tools to help others scrape data and avoid detection.
Bright Data argues its services allow customers to search for data that users choose to make public on the internet, and claims its services do not require users to have a Meta account. Meta claimed Bright Data’s practices violate Meta’s terms of service regardless, and accused the company of breach of contract and tortious interference with contract in its motion for summary judgment.
In response, Bright Data filed its own motion for summary judgment to dismiss the breach of contract claims.
Senior U.S. District Judge Edward Chen sided with Bright Data, finding the company could only violate Meta’s terms of service if Meta proved that Bright Data scraped data while logged into a Meta account.
“Meta has not presented evidence sufficient to raise a reasonable inference that Bright Data scraped data while logged into an account and thereby accessed nonpublic data,” Chen wrote. “Despite having access to its own computer infrastructure as well as extensive discovery opportunities, Meta has not shown any data that its users’ protected data — data not publicly available — was scraped and sold by Bright Data.”
Instead of proof, Chen wrote that Meta has repeatedly claimed that Bright Data is selling “vast” amounts of scraped data from Facebook and Instagram.
Bright Data claimed it is not a “user” of Facebook or Instagram if it is not logged into a Meta account while scraping, and Chen agreed.
“When subjected to established canons of construction, the Facebook and Instagram terms support the interpretation that the terms only prohibit logged-in scraping, and not logged-off scraping,” Chen wrote. A visitor is not considered a “user” unless they have an account, he wrote, and noted that a visitor to Facebook or Instagram does not even see any terms of use or policies until they register for an account.
“Without going through this process, a visitor would not even have the opportunity to see the terms, nor could the visitor consent to the terms. This indicates that a visitor is not a ‘user’ of Facebook or Instagram who can be bound by the terms; rather, a user is someone who has a Facebook or Instagram account,” Chen wrote.
Because of all the facts, Chen found Bright Data could not be liable for any breach of contract claims.
“When Bright Data scraped data, it did so without logging in and using its Meta accounts; instead, it was acting in the exact same capacity as any outside nonsubscribing visitor trying to overcome Meta’s anti-bot technology,” Chen wrote.
Meta can amend its complaint if it wishes to do so; the remaining tortious interference with contract claim against Bright Data will be discussed more in a status conference in March, Chen wrote.
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