QUESTION
Is it legal to build software that crawls the public Reddit posts of someone and derives statistics/patterns from it?
Asked on Oct 29th, 2021 on Internet Law - Washington
More details to this question:
Basic idea: while browsing online, people come across others that appeal to them in some way (insightful post, match in interests, etc). Normally, a long process of scanning through their content is then needed, to see if they match enough to be worth further effort. My idea is to create software to automate this, by crawling the person's public content and reporting various factors (eg. interests, religious views, guessed relationship status, etc.). I'm concerned some of my ideas may violate privacy laws, however; so, split into subquestions: 1) Is it ok to crawl public Reddit posts passively (by my server code), and store data-analytics such as interest-specific "keywords", AI-calculated "sentiment" ratings, subreddits joined, etc? 2) If passive crawling is not ok, what about if only done for the accounts requested by a user of my app? 3) If server-based operation is not ok, what if the app does the crawling+storing "locally only", ie. keeping it on the user's device only?
1 ANSWER
E-Commerce Law Attorney serving Akron, OH
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Andrew M. Jaffe, Attorney at Law
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The 9th district, where you live, has recently decided a number of cases concerning crawling of accounts. It would be beneficial to know more about your business model and how you are going to present it.
I would be happy to discuss your questions on the phone. We can schedule a call for most any afternoon (Eastern time) including weekends. There is no charge for this initial consultation and it is covered by attorney/client privilege.
Answered on Oct 30th, 2021 at 10:07 AM