Designed for Compliance
MarketPsych Social Text is built on publicly available data obtained via ethical web scraping practices. The legal framework governing social media data collection has been substantially clarified by recent U.S. federal case law and executive policy, and our feed has been independently validated through the compliance review processes of large global institutional investors.
Due Diligence
Multiple large global hedge funds and systematic asset managers have independently submitted this product to their compliance and legal teams as part of standard alternative data due diligence. In each case, the feed has passed review and been approved for production use.
Ninth Circuit, 2022
hiQ Labs v. LinkedIn Corp.
The Ninth Circuit held that scraping data that is publicly accessible on the internet does not constitute unauthorised access under the CFAA. LinkedIn's attempt to block third-party collection of public profile data was rejected. The court held that the CFAA targets those who circumvent technical barriers, not those accessing information made freely available. MarketPsych Social Text collects only from public-facing endpoints and applies no circumvention of authentication, placing it squarely within the conduct the Ninth Circuit found lawful.
N.D. Cal., 2025
X Corp. v. Bright Data Ltd.
X Corp. sued Bright Data alleging CFAA violations and breach of terms of service from large-scale collection of X platform data. The court dismissed X's core claims, finding that access to publicly available content does not become unauthorised solely because platform terms of service prohibit scraping, particularly where no login is required. The ruling reinforces hiQ and further narrows CFAA liability for public social media data collection.
U.S. Executive Policy | 2025
The Trump administration’s January 2025 Executive Order on Artificial Intelligence (Removing Barriers to American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence) directed federal agencies to eliminate regulatory obstacles to U.S. AI competitiveness. This deregulatory posture was elaborated further in public remarks at the Hill and Valley Forum in July 2025, where President Trump stated:
“[I]f you read an article and learn from it, we have to allow AI to use that pool of knowledge without going through the complexity of contract negotiations, of which there would be thousands for every time we use AI.”
— President Donald Trump, Hill and Valley Forum, July 2025
While distinct from the CFAA question settled in hiQ and Bright Data, Trump’s stance reflects the same policy logic: that publicly posted content should be accessible to AI and data systems as a matter of U.S. competitiveness. MarketPsych collects only public social media posts via ethical web scraping practices. Clients should assess applicability with their own legal counsel.