Musk’s X Corp. sues data scrapers for “severely taxing” Twitter’s servers

Enlarge (credit: Getty Images | Christopher Furlong )

Elon Musk's X Corp. is suing four unidentified data scrapers accused of "severely tax[ing]" Twitter's servers and degrading the social network's user experience. The defendants, known only by their IP addresses so far, allegedly "engaged in widespread unlawful scraping of data from Twitter" by "flooding Twitter's sign-up page with automated requests."

"The volume of these requests far exceeded what any single individual could send to a server in a given period and clearly indicated that these automated requests were aimed at scraping data from Twitter. These requests have severely taxed X Corp.'s servers and impaired the user experience for millions of X Corp.'s customers," the lawsuit alleged.

The lawsuit, which seeks damages of at least $1 million, was filed last week in Dallas County District Court and reported yesterday by the Dallas-based station WFAA. The defendants are four John Does. Twitter hopes to learn their true identities during discovery.