Instagram scraping

Could anyone here explain what scraping means?

I have been reading up both on this forum and others and still cannot get to a solid definition of what scraping actually means and how it is applied? Especially in the sense of using a bot.

Can anybody offer an explanation in layman's terms? "Scrape usernames" for example........ what?!

it means to gather user names

OneWingedAngel said:

it means to gather user names

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So I used to use massplanner, right... and it had an option under the follow tab (and others) that said scrape usernames. What would that mean?
How would I practically apply it?
Like what does gathering usernames help with?

Thanks for the reply

Ignore what the above user said.

Scraping, at least as I understand it, is the process of gathering information in mass.

In regards to Instagram, you could scrape (gather) a list of users who have liked a specific picture, follow a person, have posted to a #. You can even scrape (download) images that a user has posted etc.

This can be used to find people to follow, filter out people with thousands of followers (So you don't waste your time following famous people who will follow fast) or even gather thousands of high-quality images in seconds.

If you gather those usernames then later on you can message them. It just adds data for you to monetize at a later date. For instance, if you are promoting an adult offer on twitter with adult pretty girl method, then every one that messages you or follows you is a man pretty much that is open to monetize. If you then scrape those usernames and say your account gets banned. you can then send all of those prime leads a new friend request. Or if you want to build a second account up. Then you can start with the 1000 other followers you already scraped and give your new account a boost. Sorry for the rambling. I hope this helped you at least a little.