Social media usage datasets: social media proxy dataset construction

Three major roadblocks to social media data collection

Engaged in data collection understand, social media platforms anti-climbing mechanism than the cell gate control is more strict. The first headache is IP blocking, the same IP continuous request immediately be pulled black; the second is the frequency of restrictions, hand speed is too fast to be popped CAPTCHA; the third is the geographical limitations, certain content is only visible in specific areas. To put it bluntly, if you want to collect complete data, you have to play "change face" - constantly changing the access identity.

The right way to open a proxy IP

The proxy IPs we're talking about here are not the kind of public resources that are shared for free.True Residential IP. As a chestnut, with ipipgo's dynamic residential IP, each request is like a real user visiting from a different home network, and the platform presses to distinguish between a real person and a program.

import requests

proxies = {
    'http': 'http://user:pass@gateway.ipipgo.com:9020',
    'https': 'http://user:pass@gateway.ipipgo.com:9020'
}

resp = requests.get('https://socialmedia.com/api', proxies=proxies)
print(resp.json())

A practical guide to avoiding the pit

Having seen too many cases of people scrapping good IP, here are three key points:

1. Rotation strategy to be randomized: Don't be silly and change IPs in order, use random pools to disrupt access patterns
2. Fingerprinting of request headers: Remember to change the User-Agent and device fingerprint every time
3. Failure to retry with restraint: Take a break when you get a 429 error, don't be a hard ass.

ipipgo's one-of-a-kind tips

There are two major killers in their dynamic residential IPs:
① Carrier-grade IP poolsDirectly connecting to local broadband operator resources, ten times more reliable than the common IP room in the market.
② TK Dedicated Channel: Optimized routing specifically for social media platforms, the measured success rate of requests can reach 98.7%

White common rollover scene QA

Q: Is proxy IP legal? Will it be blocked?
A: regular residential IP itself is completely legal, as long as the compliance with the platform rules do not maliciously crawl, ipipgo IP have real users endorsement!

Q: What is the difference between the Enterprise and Standard editions?
A：Enterprise version with exclusive IP pool and QoS protection, suitable for teams that need 7 × 24 hours of stable collection, ordinary users with the standard version is enough!

Q: What should I do if I encounter a connection timeout?
A: First check the whitelist settings, ipipgo has real-time IP health monitoring in the background, it is recommended to turn on the automatic switching function

The Carefulness of Data Cleansing

Getting the data is just the first step, remember to use this trick to remove the falsehoods:
1. Timestamp alignment: Uniform conversion of data from different time zones to UTC time
2. Sentiment value filtering: excluding adbot content with simple regularity
3. Calculation of hotspot trends: cross analysis by tagging IPs according to their geographic location

 Example of geotag processing
def geo_tag(ip):
    api_url = f'http://api.ipipgo.com/geo?ip={ip}'
    resp = requests.get(api_url)
    return resp.json()['city']

As a final rant, don't just focus on the technical implementation of the dataset you're making.Data ComplianceIt's the lifeblood. ipipgo's customized solution can configure data desensitization rules on demand, which is especially important for enterprise users. Remember, playing with data can be wild, the bottom line can not be broken.