A lawsuit filed against Meta on Wednesday argues that US law mandates allowing the use of unofficial add-ons to give users more control over their social media feeds. This legal action is part of a ongoing series of conflicts where Meta has clashed with researchers and developers over tools that enhance privacy or collect research data. This lawsuit could open the door for researchers to release add-ons that help study how social media algorithms impact users, and also give users greater control over the algorithms that influence their online experience.
Filed by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of researcher Ethan Zuckerman, the lawsuit seeks to leverage a federal law that has typically protected social media platforms in order to demand transparency. Zuckerman argues that a portion of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants users the right to control their internet access and the tools they utilize to do so.
Zuckerman’s aim is to prevent Facebook from blocking his upcoming browser extension called Unfollow Everything 2.0, which enables users to easily unfollow friends, groups, and pages on the platform, thereby eliminating their updates from appearing in the user’s newsfeed. This tool would empower users to modify or disable Facebook’s engagement-driven feed, which is currently a cumbersome process of individually unfollowing each entity.
Given Meta’s past actions against similar tools, Zuckerman is cautious about releasing his tool until a ruling is made on the lawsuit. Meta has previously taken actions against browser extensions like Friendly and developers like Louis Barclay for developing tools that alter the Facebook experience.
Zuckerman’s lawsuit, if successful, could potentially provide users with more control over their social media experience and challenge the dominance of algorithms in shaping online interactions.
