Bright Data Sues to Protect Access to Public Information on Meta Sites

Bright Data seeks a declaratory judgment to prohibit Meta from blocking Bright Data’s access to “purely public information" on Meta websites that Meta "expressly says it does not own,” said the redacted public version of its complaint Wednesday (docket N23C-01-065) in Delaware Superior Court in New Castle County. The court granted Bright Data’s motion for leave to file the complaint under seal to protect confidential and sensitive information, but Bright Data didn’t previously disclose what the lawsuit was about (see 2301180044).

Bright Data, which bills itself as the world’s top web data platform, is “revolutionizing” the internet “in much the same way as Google,” by developing “best-in-class technologies” to provide access to public data online, said the complaint. All of Bright Data’s 10,000 global corporate customers rely on its platform to “retrieve and synthesize” public internet data, it said.

Bright Data accesses only “purely public data,” said the complaint. “It does not search for, compile, or sell data that is protected by a paywall, password, or login page,” it said. “Even so, vast amounts of useful public, non-proprietary information is available, and it is valuable to consumers and companies alike.”

Enter Meta, which sent Bright Data a cease and desist email Nov. 29, in which Allison Hendrix, Meta's director-privacy and data policy, demanded that Bright Data stop selling any user data it obtained from Meta's “family of apps," said the complaint. It also told Bright Data to "stop scraping and facilitating the scraping of Meta users' data" by Bright Data's own customers, it said. “In short, Meta made clear that it was seeking to wrest control over public data it does not own.”

In asserting the power to stop Bright Data from searching for publicly available information, Meta cited only the Facebook and Instagram terms of service as the basis for its authority to make those demands, said the complaint. But Bright Data never agreed to those terms, it said. Bright Data subsequently terminated the contracts Meta identified as the basis for its complaints, it said.

Because Bright Data doesn't use an Instagram or Facebook account “to search for and use public data posted on those sites,” it's not required to agree to Meta's terms, and hasn't done so, said the complaint. “Put simply, Bright Data does not enter Meta's walled garden, nor does it seek entry. It collects only what it can see from the outside.”

Bright Data seeks relief under the Delaware Declaratory Judgment Act, said the complaint. “As a result of Meta's demands, Bright Data's right to collect public information on Meta's sites is directly threatened,” it said. Meta created “an actual, definite, and justiciable case and controversy,” it said. Bright Data “seeks a declaration that Bright Data and its users have every right to search and use wholly public information posted on Meta's websites,” it said. Meta didn’t comment Friday.