Wouldn’t those other options be C&D’d?
*I am a layman
Comment on Unofficial Reddit API
EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Is there a reason you’re scraping data rather than attaching a network sniffer/reverse engineering the official apps and documenting the results?
the_post_of_tom_joad@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
I suspect that any of the methods proposed here would be prone to a C&D, but the safest legally would probably be the RSS method (not a lawyer though). Reddit’s RSS feeds are public, documented, and available without the need for authentication or an API key, so I don’t see how they could claim that a wrapper is unauthorised/illegal. Documenting their private API however seems like a gray area. Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. found that APIs are copyrightable, but this use may constitute fair use.
AnonCoder1337@discuss.online 4 months ago
Because we need to retain the breadth of functionality the API has, if you want to just scrape posts, APIs for that already exist, but i am aiming for something more.
About reverse engineering, they can change that part at any time too, and may be even more fragile as they can change that without breaking the UX, if they change the front page CSS selectors or layout for example, it will effect the UX more as it changes the expected output, not the middle end that is just raw data.
Thats my reasoning, I appreciate the input though (:
EmilyIsTrans@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 months ago
Making a breaking change to the mobile API alao breaks old outdated installations of the app. Websites and their APIs are usually synced, apps not so.
If they were really motivated to stop your method, they could just obfuscate the frontend with webpack and break your scraper every time they make an update.
MHLoppy@fedia.io 4 months ago
There's currently no implementation (the repos are currently just skeletons), so it could just be a semantics difference right now.