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Is scraping from public Facebook pages legal?


My question is: Is scraping from public Facebook pages legal ?

Why am I asking that question : To get the rating of facebook pages that we don't own using the graph API we will need a page access token, and that is impossible (because the pages that I am talking about are not mine). For that reason I am thinking about scraping the rating of these pages (using Python/Beautiful Soup)


Solution

  • Scraping Facebook breaks the ToS. https://www.facebook.com/legal/terms in Section 2: Safety #2: You will not collect users' content or information, or otherwise access Facebook, using automated means (such as harvesting bots, robots, spiders, or scrapers) without our prior permission.

    So I wouldn't try it. If they consider it 'stealing' information (and I believe they would), they could come after you, as this data is how they make their income.