Social media users have constantly been at war against algorithmic feeds. It’s something that affects pretty much all social media apps and sites including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, X, Etc. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University (on behalf of a researcher there) has filed a lawsuit against Meta over how the company is protecting its Facebook news feed. Also, the researcher wants to bring an extension that will allow people to essentially turn off their news feeds.
Most people don’t like being fed algorithmic news feeds. A lot of the time, it’s mostly just the company pushing content that it thinks you want to see based on what’s popular. However, many users slam this method. This is why companies have been forced to offer chronological feeds.
A user filed a lawsuit against Meta over the Facebook news feed
The person who established the lawsuit is named Ethan Zuckerman. He’s not seeking money for the lawsuit. Rather, he wants Meta to enable a Facebook extension that he’s developed. It’s called Unfollow Everything 2.0. What this extension would do is essentially turn off your news feed.
It doesn’t include hacking the system or anything like that. Rather, this tool will allow people to unfollow all of the people and groups that they’re following. This would free them from the feed, and they’ll be free to follow whoever they please. This will allow them to curate the feed to their own liking rather than relying on Facebook to do so.
Obviously, Meta is not happy about this. There’s a reason why it’s called Unfollow Everything 2.0. Back in 2021, a UK user developed a tool called Unfollow Everything that did much the same thing. However, Meta (then called Facebook) permanently disabled that person’s account.
So, it appears that Zuckerman faces the same fate. However, that may not be so. Zuckerman has an ace up his sleeve: his case includes a “provision protecting the developers of third-party tools that allow people to curate what they see online, including by blocking content they consider objectionable.”
So, does this mean that Meta is in hot water? Well, the company has an ace of its own. Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act basically protects Meta from being legally liable based on the actions of its users. So, at this point, we don’t know how far this case will get. We’ll have to wait for more information to be sure.