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.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.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.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.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.