ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, has introduced a powerful web scraper named “Bytespider.” Launched in April, Bytespider is recognized as one of the most aggressive data collectors online, outpacing other major tech firms significantly in terms of data collection speed.

Despite the looming threat of a U.S. ban on TikTok, ByteDance continues its aggressive data collection strategy. President Joe Biden has demanded the sale or shutdown of TikTok due to national security concerns. Bytespider’s disregard for robots.txt, a voluntary code that advises scrapers to avoid certain websites, adds to the controversy.

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The increase in web scraping is linked to ByteDance’s development of a new large language model (LLM) to improve TikTok’s search capabilities. A recent update to TikTok’s search function allows real-time keyword searches for ads, potentially enhancing ad visibility.

ByteDance has yet to respond to Benzinga’s queries.

In August, NVIDIA faced scrutiny for scraping videos from platforms like YouTube to train its AI models. This revelation raised concerns about content creators’ rights and the ethical implications of using publicly available data without explicit consent.

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This story was generated using Benzinga Neuro and edited by Pooja Rajkumari