As Australia bans social for kids, what does that mean for web scraping and content discovery?

With Australia banning under-16 from social media, how will that impact content discovery? Research into web scraping gives us a pretty good idea…

Earlier this month, Australia became the first country to ban under-16s from using major social media platforms, including TikTok, X, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and Threads. Children cannot create new accounts and existing profiles are being deactivated. The government says the move aims to reduce exposure to harmful content, cyberbullying and online grooming, following a 2025 study that found 96% of children aged 10–15 use social media.

While the ban sparks global conversations about protecting young users, TikTok continues to rise as a critical data source for AI and business intelligence. Despite regulatory scrutiny in multiple countries, TikTok surged to number one on Decodo’s list of the most scraped websites, overtaking Google and highlighting the platform’s growing role in video and social media data collection.

With more than 1.5 billion active users and a recommendation system that drives content discovery, TikTok’s rise highlights the AI industry’s focus on short-form video data. Video and social media platforms now account for 38% of all web scraping activity, reflecting the shift toward multimodal datasets that combine video, text, images, and engagement metrics for smarter AI and business insights.

The full report can be found here: https://decodo.com/blog/most-scraped-websites-2025#h2-scraping_trends_by_category 

The most scraped websites 2025

While Google has slipped from first to second place, it remains indispensable. As the primary gateway to information online, it fuels research, SEO and AI initiatives with a vast, ever-evolving data ecosystem. Processing more than 13.7 billion searches daily, Google offers real-time insights into global interests, consumer demand, and emerging market trends, making its data a foundation for business intelligence.

Amazon’s drop to third place (from second in 2024) reflects the growing diversity of digital data sources rather than a decline in influence. As the world’s largest online marketplace, Amazon remains a leader in product intelligence – from pricing and reviews to seller performance and inventory insights. Its data continues to be crucial for understanding online consumer behavior, competitive dynamics, and market trends.

Platforms that left the top 10

With the new targets climbing the list, a few websites dropped in position. Whether it’s due to the better alternative for data collection or the declining relevance of their content, their role in scraping priorities has noticeably decreased:

• TripAdvisor (previously #3) – dramatic change indicates that users are replacing review platforms with more comprehensive data sources that offer richer content variety and real-time insights.
• Craigslist (previously #5) – less relevant for modern LLM and AI agent training needs compared to other community forums, where the user activity is higher.
• Bing (previously #6) – businesses reduced data collection from this search engine and prioritized the dominant search engine for real-time data.
• Shopify (previously #8) – individual store scraping declined as businesses focus on major marketplace data.
• Lazada (previously #9) – replaced by bigger eCommerce marketplaces around the globe.
• Zillow (previously #10) – real estate data demand shifted toward broader business intelligence platforms.

Vaidotas Juknys, Chief Commercial Officer at Decodo, shares insights on what’s ahead for data scraping: “We’re seeing a clear move toward websites that have lots of different types of content instead of just basic info. The biggest reason for this shift is that everyone needs tons of varied, good-quality data to train AI chatbots, language models, and other smart tools. Companies operating in various industries are also realizing that the best insights come from mixing different kinds of content together – videos, text, images, and how people interact with certain platforms.”

The full report can be found here: https://decodo.com/blog/most-scraped-websites-2025#h2-scraping_trends_by_category