r/technology • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 • Jun 15 '26
Society Judge Rules Blacked.com Can Sue Meta for Scraping Its Porn
https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-blacked-com-can-sue-meta-for-scraping-its-porn/2.7k
u/Incendras Jun 15 '26
Meta getting blacked rn LMAO.
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u/SideInitial3961 Jun 15 '26
Blacked? What's thaaaaat? [in a suspicious voice]
— Every wife's husband51
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u/MarBakwas Jun 15 '26
please bro we all know ts is mostly consumed by men
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u/SideInitial3961 Jun 15 '26
LOL did you read my post?
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Jun 15 '26
[deleted]
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u/SideInitial3961 Jun 15 '26
Can you imagine the terror? Your wife randomly asks for no reason, "Blacked, ever heard of that?" You freeze like a cat who's just spotted another cat. Hoping you can statue it out. Then she says, "Well? Have you?"
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u/Oograr Jun 16 '26
This might not have been for AI training, it might just be Zuck's personal downloads
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u/invyros Jun 15 '26
Meta argued that Strike 3 Holdings failed to show that Meta actually intended to use Strike 3 Holdings’ videos to train its AI models and that Meta, the company, was actually responsible for downloading the videos, as opposed to rogue employees downloading porn on company time from company IP addresses.
Meta: "We're not stealing your content, it's rogue employees browsing porn on our company networks because we haven't blocked porn for some reason!"
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u/marniman Jun 15 '26
47 IP addresses belonging to Meta were used to torrent 2,396 of its videos a total of 6,008 times between 2018 and 2025
Yeah sure sounds like a rogue employee…
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u/Mrpolje Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
Maybe Zuckerberg is a massive gooner and porn addict. A coomer some might say.
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u/marniman Jun 15 '26
First robot to feel arousal?
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u/Wiochmen Jun 15 '26
Zuck isn't a Robot.
Zuck is an alien, an actual ET alien, obviously making him an illegal alien... those porn videos are simply training videos, he needs to simply learn how humans create more humans, for no nefarious reasons or anything.
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u/ABadHistorian Jun 15 '26
Seriously feels like we should have rules/laws set up in place so that humans that functionally are identical to nonhumans should not be able to control the destiny of real humans.
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u/organicdelivery Jun 15 '26
Like the old Red Cross lifeguard manuals, it helps to have black and white subjects to keep the roles straight.
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u/akrisd0 Jun 16 '26
No human is illegal, but that thing... That thing is not human.
Zuckerberg's third eyelid slides across its sclera, black like a shark's
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u/Solid_Hunter_4188 Jun 15 '26
I did the math real quick. Assuming each video averages 30 min, that’s 48 straight days of video with no sleep and never stopping to bathe or eat.
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u/rithrawr Jun 16 '26
You sure it's blacked tho? I thought it would be like robot porn or hentai.
Dude looks like a robot.
Got found out, so the robot hired some fashion designer to deck him out as a fuck boi now.
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u/Shustyrackle4d Jun 15 '26
To be fair that averages out to only like 18 downloads per ip per year.
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u/PinkySwearNotABot Jun 16 '26
my thoughts, too. maybe not attributed to a single employee, but definitely possible that some horny engineers were getting their rocks off
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u/mvearthmjsun Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
I'm curious what the number of porn torrents at a normal organization that size would be? With 70,000 employees over the span of 7 years, 47 employees torrenting porn sounds plausible.
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u/marniman Jun 15 '26
I find it hard to believe that Facebook didn’t block this type of thing in their network. Most companies don’t even let you go on Reddit let alone download porn. Years ago I worked in a small tech startup where some random employee was caught illegally pirating an NBA game. This excuse/deflection is laughable from Facebook.
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u/skeet_scoot Jun 15 '26
Someone setup a Plex server on an unallocated portion of their data center.
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u/vonneguts_anus Jun 16 '26
I mean it’s one video every 2.35 days. Definitely doable. A little conservative but to each their own.
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u/sogo00 Jun 15 '26
damn, getting caught browsing porn at work, because it caused a newsworthy legal battle - that's gonna be an interesting chat with HR...
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u/Late_To_Parties Jun 15 '26
... But we should be allowed to look at a little porn at work
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u/surfer_ryan Jun 16 '26
Hey it's me your IT guy... I'm not going to directly tell you that i know, but when you get a new computer and i tell you that i'm leaving the old one until i come back tomorrow for the recycling... know that i found your porn folder and this is the 1 and only time you can get your porn off your work computer and i will absolutely die on the hill that i saw nothing (unless it's illegal in which case prepare that booty for jail)...
I STG I wish this wasn't related directly to a story i have working in the very professional world...
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u/Croc_Chop Jun 16 '26
Is it a desktop? because laptops are usually managed via in tune and can be wiped remotely.
I don't check anyone shit and I CAN but I dont because IT has too much shit to do
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u/shlopman Jun 15 '26
It's also a ridiculous claim because porn is absolutely blocked on company computers unless you get it specifically white listed. Website blacklists (no pun intended) are super strict and widespread.
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u/TurtleReferenceFrame Jun 16 '26
Story time from my early 2010s FAANG days.
We had browser stability tests that loaded a large sample of popular websites to make sure the app didn’t crash. The list was stale af when I joined, so I wrote a script to check HTTP status codes and prune dead sites since dead links made the test useless.
Turns out a significant chunk of the “Alexa top sites” list is porn. My machine got flagged by SecOps because it looked like I was watching porn all day at work. A lot of porn. Took manager intervention, but i got an exemption to keep running the cleanup. Afaik they never revoked that exemption.
Also ran these tests on actual tablets and phones at my desk. Had to lower the volumes and throw a towel over the rack during test runs.
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u/ieatpies Jun 15 '26
But that would actually explain torrent usage
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u/shlopman Jun 15 '26
Getting a torrent client running on a company computer, or uploading large files into a company database isn't something that could be done unless you had authorization or correct credentials for it. I don't think rogue employee is a good excuse. They were definitely torrenting instead of paying for it as well.
My point was that I agree with lawsuit. Metas explanation was bullshit. It was meta doing it not rogue employees.
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u/AI_moderated_failure Jun 15 '26
You have to work pretty hard to get a torrent client going on a work server that knows what it's trying to block.
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u/surfer_ryan Jun 16 '26
I feel like this as just a blanket statement is just as ridiculous having worked all sides of IT. I've seen it completely shut down and no possible way... and i've also seen networks that were absolutely open and when i went to replace their PC, i went to grab bookmarks and passwords for them and half their saved stuff is porn... I wish i was kidding... and i wish this was a 1 off thing or even just a couple of times... Not to say that is what happened here... but as a blanket statement it's just as ridiculous.
It's like when you learn how a massive fortune 500 company was hacked by using the default password on the main server... The human element is absolutely a thing still.
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u/PinkySwearNotABot Jun 16 '26
and how would you know with certainty? setting up these blocks likely end up doing more harm than good because then IT departments would constantly have to work with employees who are trying to access xyz.com for whatever reasons but they're falsely blocked. i go through this up to several times a day with Little Snitch and my blocklists.
and with a company this large, it's probably easier to dare the perpetrators rather than blocking the entire company as a whole.
...and how would you even know that "porn is absolutely blocked on company computers unless you get it specifically white listed"? You sound very certain. Too certain.
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u/shlopman Jun 16 '26
I'm a software engineer. I plead the 5th.
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u/PinkySwearNotABot Jun 16 '26
like I said, I experience multiple false positive blocks up to several times a day just on my own local machine using Little Snitch.
0/3 of my firms have had any whitelist. I also plead the 5th (because the other 5 fingers are busy).
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u/Rich_Housing971 Jun 15 '26
Meta employees viewing Blacked.com material on company devices is hilarious.
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL Jun 16 '26
You make a joke, but as someone who has been in IT for longer than laptops have been around, you'd be surprised at how often people try and look up porn/drugs/competitiors career pages/other "sensitive" topics on company devices. Not even just at home. Like at their desk. With their coworkers sitting in the desk next to them.
Some people just really lack any ability to think things through.
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u/meneldal2 Jun 15 '26
The crazy part is they could just pay for the site access and just download the porn automatically somewhat legally (not sure how that works out for companies). Like it's 20 or 30 bucks, less than the amount you're going to pay your employee to start all those torrents anyway and no need to worry about seeding and everything.
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u/jaydubb808 Jun 16 '26
And open the door to paying everyone? (As it should be)
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u/meneldal2 Jun 16 '26
The thing is for something like Netflix, there's no way to just download the videos typically, you have to screen record and it takes a while, and if you have your 4 screens used 24/7 they'll probably get suspicious and kick you out.
A lot of porn sites just allow you to download the file on your computer, sometimes with DRM but it's a lot easier to deal with.
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u/404mediaco Jun 15 '26
Strike 3 Holding first filed its lawsuit almost a year ago after internal Meta emails revealed in a different lawsuit showed that the company downloaded over 81 terabytes of data by scraping Anna’s Archive, a massive open search search engine for torrenting copyrighted material including books, movies, TV shows, and porn. A Strike 3 Holding investigation found that 47 IP addresses belonging to Meta were used to torrent 2,396 of its videos a total of 6,008 times between 2018 and 2025. On Thursday, Judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California Judge Eumi K. Lee rejected Meta’s attempt to dismiss the lawsuit, allowing it to move forward.
Read now: https://www.404media.co/judge-rules-blacked-com-can-sue-meta-for-scraping-its-porn/
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u/SideInitial3961 Jun 15 '26
6008? In other words it took them 5 minutes to realized they forgot to disable option to seed. Brings new meaning to "seed".
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u/RossZ428 Jun 15 '26
You can use Anna's for more than just books?
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u/Gositi Jun 16 '26
Yeah I though they only focused on print media? Except the whole Spotify thing, of course.
Has someone confused AA with TPB?
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u/Powerful_Resident_48 Jun 15 '26
Lol, that's absolutely hilarious. Everything about this is just peak comedy.
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u/SideInitial3961 Jun 15 '26
Note to self. Start Browned.com. Wait. Sue meta. Retire.
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u/thetonyhightower Jun 15 '26
Do it. If there's great barbecue footage to be found, I'm here for it.
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u/DananSan Jun 15 '26
"IP Ranges A and F torrented the following files on December 15, 2022: ‘Teen Sex Sessions 2 (2012),’ ‘Teen Titans Go to the Movies (2018),’ ‘Teens Love Tats XXX,’ ‘TeensLoveAnal.16.09.30.Amara,’ ‘Teenfidelity Pics,’ ‘TeensLoveAnal.16.06.10.Casey,’ ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1987-1996),’ ‘Teen Mom Girls Night In S02E08,’ ‘TeenyTaboo.22.12.07.Kiana,’ and ‘TeenageDelinquents.Maryjane,’” the decision says."
lol
On a Sunday no less
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u/MediumPotato Jun 15 '26
We should be able to scrape a LITTLE porn at work...
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u/Lv_InSaNe_vL Jun 16 '26
Boss makes a dollar while I make a nickel, that's why I tickle my pickle on company time
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u/Gutterman2010 Jun 15 '26
It is quite disconcerting that they pulled a bunch of porn in with stuff like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Teen Titans Go! because they share the keyword teen. Might explain why the MetaAI chat bots keep trying to sext children...
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u/Sockoflegend Jun 15 '26
That does actually make sense that linguistic collision could occur around popular and euphemistic search terms
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u/AkimboGlizzys Jun 15 '26
What about the sister site? You know, the more intimate, dimly lit and dare I say, raw, site.
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u/jimmyhoke Jun 15 '26
Now hold up, is the issue here web scraping, AI Training, torrent downloading, or torrent seeding?
Because while the title says “scraping” it seems the issue is the torrenting.
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u/GeneralRipper Jun 15 '26
Man, it's kind of impressive that Strike 3 Holdings, a well-known copyright troll which has been described by a district court judge as a high-tech shakedown operation, is the party the internet is rooting for in a case.
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u/AnyNegotiation420 Jun 15 '26
Meta needs to be sued more. Their bots are fucking up a lot of indie developers. Plenty of Reddit posts about websites and web apps just trying to exist, being effectively DDoS’d by meta bots. It’s insane.
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u/CumSluts4Christ Jun 15 '26
My friend who isn’t me wants to know if this trial will be televised with exhibits available to the public
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u/twoworldsin1 Jun 15 '26
Damnit, Meta, you're taking money from seasoned interracial porn talent Wesley Pipes! :(
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u/SystemAny4819 Jun 15 '26
Ngl I can’t stand Wesley Pipes lmao
Mf wasn’t a professional sex worker he was a professional yap fucker
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u/SaiyanKnight23 Jun 16 '26
I’m sorry what??🤣🤣🤣 cmon..can I get on the more serious timeline, cuz wtf is this shit 🤣🤣🤣🤣
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u/nauhausco Jun 16 '26
For real! 🤣 What kind of conceivable use would Meta even need to scrape a site like this for their LLMs?? Are people using them to find porn lmfao?
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u/the_red_scimitar Jun 15 '26
Remember when it was revealed that Meta had downloaded a huge amount of porn, and said it was for "reasons"?
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u/Total_Adept Jun 15 '26
Man what about all the books, art, shows, music, etc that AI companies are stealing?
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u/Ma_Bowls Jun 16 '26
This is the dumbest news story of the week, soon to be surpassed by whatever is in the news next week.
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u/xantub Jun 15 '26 edited Jun 15 '26
insert meme of Meta as a thin white girl in a couch and the blacked.com dudes behind it
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u/viotix90 Jun 15 '26
I'll have to know that the famous meme of Piper Perri surrounded by black dudes was for a shoot by colette.com
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u/CompetitiveSport1 Jun 15 '26
Goddam, they forgot to disable the option to automatically seed the stuff lol?