Facebook Move Against NYU Research Stirs Scraping Policy Feud

Facebook Inc.‘s decision this week to disable the accounts of New York University researchers studying political ads further fuels a policy debate around the practice of data scraping and increases the potential for a legal dispute.

Restricting the researchers’ access raises broader questions about whether gathering information online in a way that’s seen as contradicting a website’s terms of service counts as a violation of federal anti-hacking law or other laws.

Facebook and other companies including LinkedIn Corp. and workforce analytics startup hiQ Labs Inc. have brought this issue before federal courts, where it remains up for debate whether ...