smeels like severe breach of ToS. virtually every single website and app mandates not to reverse engineer and not to temper with inner workings (including client-server networking).

side note, YC25/YC26 batches have multiple startups that blantly violate ToS and sitting on a timebomb just pending a lawsuite and Cease and Desist Letters.

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alexblackwell_ 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The goal is not to scrape sites en-masse, but to allow people to automate their existing workflows and actions that they perform already via a browser. I understand the concerns around this being unethical, and it's something I spent a lot of time thinking about when I worked on automations previously. I've written a decent amount about how I don't think that sneaker bots or ticket bots are ethical. I don't support mass scraping websites/making the web more inaccessible for others.

I do have to push back on the ToS comments though. Automation is used daily by nearly all companies. RPA is a billion dollar industry. Browserbase raised at 300M valuation. Is using puppeteer to automate a form submission a violation of ToS? If so then why is using a screen reader not? Is it the intention? Why is hitting network requests directly different? I personally don't think that automation is unethical (as long as it is not affecting server capacity). I don't think the answer to the ethical problems in scraping is just not to automate at all. Open to disagreement here though.

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teraflop 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> Is using puppeteer to automate a form submission a violation of ToS? If so then why is using a screen reader not?

Without taking a position on the ethics of automation, surely this isn't a serious question? Things that the ToS prohibits you from doing are ToS violations, and other things aren't.

For instance, from AirBnb's terms of service: "Do not use bots, crawlers, scrapers, or other automated means to access or collect data or other content from or otherwise interact with the Airbnb Platform."

There is no similar prohibition against using screen readers.

	▲	alexblackwell_ 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		My broader point is that these ToS clauses are often so broad and vague that they're essentially unenforceable and not meaningful in practice. For example, "Do not use bots" covers a pretty substantial amount of ground, and intention isn't exactly something you can screen for. Is an autofill chrome extension a bot? If so what separates that autofill from accessibility extensions? Is someone using Whispr flow to fill forms considered a bot? AirBNB doesn't block Google's crawler. Why? A company can enforce its TOS as it wishes. My general point is that the waters are murky, and that automation is a sort of sliding scale.
	▲	janalsncm 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Under that ToS would a screen reader not be considered “other automated means” of “interacting with” the platform? It is automatically walking an accessibility tree.
	▲	mil22 43 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Ah yes, AirBnB, the company that famously hacked Craigslist to achieve viral growth by using a bot, crawler, scraper and definitely automated means to access and collect Craiglist's data and other content from and otherwise interact with the Craigslist platform.
	▲	ImPostingOnHN 4 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> For instance, from AirBnb's terms of service: "Do not use bots, crawlers, scrapers, or other automated means to access or collect data or other content from or otherwise interact with the Airbnb Platform." > There is no similar prohibition against using screen readers. A screen reader uses automated means to access or collect data or other content from or otherwise interact with a platform.

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jasonlotito 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Wait till these sites discover web browsers and developer tools.