Elon Musk sues four unknown individuals for scraping Twitter’s data

The Elon Musk-owned X Corp. is suing four unnamed individuals over allegations they illegally scraped user data from Twitter, as first reported by CNBC. The lawsuit was filed in a Dallas County, Texas, court on July 6th and seeks over $1 million in damages.

According to the complaint, the four entities, which are identified only by their IP addresses, unlawfully scraped Twitter user data in violation of the platform’s terms of service. The lawsuit describes these IP addresses as “flooding” Twitter’s sign-up page with “automated requests,” which allegedly put a strain on the company’s servers and disrupted users’ experience.

X Corp. says it “has been unable to ascertain” the identities of all four individuals. The company alleges that their actions constituted unjust enrichment at X Corp.’s expense, noting that the defendants made a profit “from their unauthorized scraping of Twitter data.”

“In response to massive demands on X Corp.’s servers from extremely aggressive data-scrapers, X Corp. has instituted limits on how many Tweets each user could View in a given day,” the lawsuit states. “X Corp. has also limited access to Tweets for users who are not signed in to a registered Twitter account.”