Bars probably don't have a directory of everyone that attends the bar, that you scraped and published without permission.

The fact that a person is a student at the school can be very sensitive information. The classic example is someone who leaves an abusive spouse/family and does not want to be found. Now their name and picture is out there, and their timetable and therefore whereabouts could be partially inferred from the school calendar by someone who knows their interests.

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Dylan16807 8 hours ago | parent [-]

> The fact that a person is a student at the school can be very sensitive information.

But they were already in the directory? That's much more "out there" than the gossip site.

I'm really skeptical of this line of logic. It feels like motivated reasoning based on not liking the site, because a privacy issue like that is easier to attack (if it's real). I think the meaningful criticisms are based on the actual functionality, the commenting.

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robotresearcher 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I understand that opinion, but the opposite view is now conventional. Corporate/college directories are usually not available in public, but only with a local auth. Even if the scraping site restricted signups to local email addresses, the college is responsible for the distribution of its directory PII so could not allow this.

Leaking PII like this would be illegal in Canada for example.

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Dylan16807 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't understand how the word "leaking" would apply here. Unless there was an unmentioned login wall for the directory he scraped, the site is mirroring the names and faces off of a much larger and already public site that nobody has said a single word in complaint of.

	▲	sfink 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's not public, it's just accessible to the student body. The directory has restrictions on how it is to be used. Those restrictions are presumably not going to permit a user script that adds a "harass this student" button to the directory page, either.