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Cara Scraping Incident: From Outcry to Call for Legislation

Artist platform Cara suffered another unauthorized scrape of 12 million images uploaded for AI training. Founder Jingna Zhang spoke out against the harm and doxxing, calling for legislation to ban non-consensual scraping.

2026-08-18 ~ 2026-08-18 · 2 episodes · 8 posts

Episode 1 · Artist platform Cara scraped again, founder calls it targeted infringement (2026-08-18, 6 posts)

Artist platform Cara was scraped for the second time, with its data uploaded to Hugging Face for AI training. Founder Jingna Zhang (zemotion) posted a thread on August 18 calling it targeted infringement, noting the incident cost the platform thousands of dollars in server fees. The scraper claims the act was legal, while creators have no effective recourse.

Confirmed

  • Cara says its data was scraped again and posted to Hugging Face; the scraper claims legality
  • The unauthorized scrape caused thousands of dollars in extra server costs
  • Zhang argued that anyone wanting training images could use existing non-consensual datasets like LAION, or scrape platforms like Bluesky and Mastodon where crawling is legally permitted; targeting an explicit opt-out platform like Cara is a targeted attack — "because Cara dared to say no"
  • She noted that while anything on the internet is technically scrapable, this should not justify harming others, and current mechanisms are deeply unfair to individuals and small businesses

Why it matters

  • The incident undercuts the "scraping is harmless" argument: victims' wishes are violated, they bear real economic costs, and they lack effective recourse
  • Cara exists as a haven for artists who opt out of AI scraping; being targeted anyway shows opt-out declarations carry no practical force, exposing institutional gaps in data compliance and creator rights protection

Episode 2 · Cara Founder Condemns Doxxing, Calls for Laws Against Non-Consensual Scraping (2026-08-18, 2 posts)

Cara founder Zhang Jingna responded to the scraping of 12 million images, condemning harassment and doxxing while urging artists to channel anger into action by pushing lawmakers to make non-consensual scraping illegal and to establish reporting mechanisms.