Support for authentication

[JustAnotherArchivist]

The topic of authentication has repeatedly come up in various places. Here, I'd like to explain why snscrape does not and will not support logging into social network accounts, using closed APIs, or similar things.

1. Scope: snscrape has always been about making it easier to programmatically access public social network service content. Things that require a login are therefore outside of the scope of what snscrape is trying to achieve to begin with.
2. Bans: Since snscrape's activities are typically borderline or actually violating the network's terms of service, it is likely that accounts used in that way would get banned, 'suspended for suspicious behaviour', etc. I have no desire to deal with that sort of fallout.
3. Testing: It's much harder to test reliably when accounts are used. This is also related to the point above: the tests could be expected to break regularly due to the test accounts getting banned.
4. Complexity: Securely handling the authentication data would add significant complexity to the code, especially since users would not want to have to specify it on every snscrape command, meaning it would have to be stored on disk. Ensuring it doesn't end up in the output or dump files would also be complicated.