NYPD spent millions to contract with firm banned by Meta for fake profiles
Scraping social media platforms may be against their terms of service, but its not illegal or unethical.<p>People seem to think social media is akin to private communications where it's more akin to the public square.  Making your IG/FB/whatever profile private doesn't change that.<p>In NYC for example, there's been a large uptick in teen shootings, many adjacent to schools, and a lot of it involves the idiots posting on social media before & after.  One tool could be simply scraping social media for these postings.  Another alternate, pre-internet tool was stop&frisk.<p>While you have a constitutional right to not be searched without consent/probably cause, you do not have a constitutional right to spouting off in the public square without consequence.  What you say publicly can & will be used against you in the court of law.<p>Putting out an IG post of yourself with illegal guns or inciting a shooting is no more private than printing out posters of the same and putting them up around the neighborhood.