In today’s digest we cover Google suing SerpApi over its web scraping activity, ByteDance boosting benefits for staff to attract and retain top AI talent around the globe, plus Facebook carrying out a test which limits the number of links creators and businesses can post on the platform. 

Google sues web scraping company, SerpApi

Google has filed a lawsuit against SerpApi, a company which provides access to web scraping tools that fetch data directly from search engines. 

According to Google, SerpApi has been acting unlawfully by using stealthy scrapers and shady back doors to conduct its scraping, circumventing Google’s security measures to “take websites’ content wholesale”. Google claims that this activity has increased considerably over the past year. 

Google’s lawsuit requests the court to stop SerpApi’s bots and their “malicious” scraping, which it says violates and willfully disregards the rights of websites and providers whose content appears in Search. 

SerpApi was similarly sued by Reddit, who filed a lawsuit against the company in October. 

ByteDance boosts benefits as AI talent war intensifies  

As the AI race rages on, so does the sector’s talent war. ByteDance, which was the top recruiter in China’s AI industry this year, has announced improved benefits for its staff in efforts to retain and attract global talent. 

According to an internal letter sent to its staff on Friday, ByteDance announced it would be lifting both the upper and lower limits of compensation packages for employees at all seniority levels. It also said its bonus pool for the current year would be 35% larger than last year’s. 

Additionally, ByteDance said it would reduce compensation paid in stock-based awards in order to increase cash compensation, while the payout period for equity grants is also shortened. 

Meanwhile, ByteDance plans to streamline its job-grading system with the goal of facilitating future pay rises. The new system will consist of 10 levels, redefining capability requirements. 

FaceBook tests free link limit for creators and businesses 

Meta is running a new test on Facebook which restricts creators and businesses to posting only two links in organic posts each calendar month, unless they have a paid Meta subscription (which starts from £9.99 per month). A number of user profiles on Professional Mode have also been included in the test. 

According to TechCrunch, news publishers have not been included in the experiment. Yet, they may still be affected – although the number of links they themselves are allowed to post will not change, they could see their traffic impacted with others decreasing their content sharing. 

Those included in the test have been told they can still share an unlimited number of affiliate links, links in comments, as well as links redirecting users to other Meta platforms. 

A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the objective of the test is to understand whether the ability to publish more posts containing links adds additional value for paid subscribers.