FBI, Scrapers, and a Weird Fediverse Encounter

A Fediverse instance admin recounts a bizarre tale: the FBI pays shady companies to scrape data, which is used to monitor online threats. The twist? A forum search engine, BoardReader, was scraping his instance and feeding data to Facebook, leading to FBI contact. The admin thwarted the scraping, only to discover the FBI's target wasn't his instance, but a user, WitchKingOfAngmar, whose threatening posts were indirectly obtained via BoardReader. This user turned out to be a perpetrator of bomb threats. The story highlights the challenges law enforcement faces with decentralized networks, and the issues of data scraping and privacy.