Who we are

We're Scraped, a small, volunteer-run, zine production team with the goal of spreading awareness around generative AI and web scraping. Most of us come from Cara, a site that has recently become a target of multiple scrapes intent on violating creator's and site's consent. You can read more about it here.

Seeing the lack of knoweledge and general misinformation surrounding scraping, and motivated by the events on Cara, we created the concept of Scraped. We hope our zines can debunk misinformation and encourage people to take action in their own communities. After all, change can't happen until people are aware of the issues that need changing.

What is Scraping?

Data scraping, or more specifically, web scraping, is the automated process of extracting or downloading data from websites using specialized software, bots, or web crawlers. The data is usually stored in a database so it can be used and accessed later. Common use cases of this data include price monitoring, analysis, and, you guessed it, AI training!

It's important to note that scraping isn't the same as training an AI model. Those are two distinct things. AI needs data to be trained, and the data has to be gathered somehow. This is where scraping comes in. No matter where you go on the internet, if you post online, you can and likely have had your work scraped!

Why you should care

Scraping, as it currently works, is theft. If someone says they do not allow their work to be scraped, that decision should be respected. However because of a lack of proper legislature, consent is disregarded. This is something that needs to change. Scraping affects everyone, not just artists. Whether you post a family photo, your grandma's famous oatmeal cookie recipe, or a video of your niece's dance recital, anyone who posts content online has likely had their content scraped. If you care about someone taking the content you post, using it without your consent, and potentially even profiting off of it, you should care about scraping!