IANAL but how would a foreign company get sued under US Law?
I understand that it would violate the ToS if they conducted this directly through Twitter, and that may or may not be a big deal depending on the local Jurisprudence and other factors- but say an application was using the Twitter API to reproduce the tweets of persons of interest, and prompting deleting them as required-- what then is to prevent our foreign fictitious company from scraping THAT service?
Twitter should not be asserting itself in this kind of overreach. Personally I look forward to it's continued decline in value.
As my first lawyer explained to me, "Anybody can sue you for anything. The question isn't 'Can they sue me?', it's 'Can you afford to go the distance?'"
Twitter has plenty of lawyers, and can afford to hire plenty more, including lawyers in whatever country you set this up in. They could go after owners, workers, hosting companies, ad providers, network providers, and anybody else with a significant connection.
Who knows if they'd bother. But I don't think anybody should expect a simple dodge to make them completely safe.
I understand that it would violate the ToS if they conducted this directly through Twitter, and that may or may not be a big deal depending on the local Jurisprudence and other factors- but say an application was using the Twitter API to reproduce the tweets of persons of interest, and prompting deleting them as required-- what then is to prevent our foreign fictitious company from scraping THAT service?
Twitter should not be asserting itself in this kind of overreach. Personally I look forward to it's continued decline in value.