New Lawsuit Aims to Give Users Control Over Facebook, Instagram Feeds
By Movieguide® Contributor
University of Massachusetts professor Ethan Zuckerman is attempting to give social media users more control over their feeds through a new lawsuit against Meta.
The lawsuit is leveraging an Act long used by social media sites to avoid legal liability for the content shared on their platforms. The lawsuit, if successful, would allow users to apply third-party apps to gain more control over what they see.
“Section 230 (c) (2) (b) is quite explicit about libraries, parents, and others having the ability to control obscene or other unwanted content on the internet,” Zuckerman said. “I actually think that anticipates having control over a social network like Facebook, having this ability to sort of say, ‘We want to opt out of the algorithm.’”
This is the first lawsuit of its kind to spin the law on social media companies and place the power back into the hands of the consumers.
“[Zuckerman’s argument] hasn’t been used before, in terms of using Section 230 to grant affirmative rights to users,” noted John Morris, a principal at the Internet Society, a nonprofit for the open development of the Internet.
“There isn’t that much case law on that section of the law, so it will be interesting to see how a judge breaks it down,” added Sophia Cope, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, of which Zuckerman is on the board of advisors.
Zuckerman’s case isn’t coming just from a theoretical tool. He is actively working on a program that would greatly reduce the reach of social media algorithms, causing the sites to be less addictive. He is not the first to create these tools, however, but the previous ones have been shut down.
His efforts are inspired by a previous tool called Unfollow Everything, which removed specified friends, groups and pages from Facebook, largely decluttering feeds. Zuckerman is working on a successor—Unfollow Everything 2.0—but is hoping to get his tool protected before releasing it.
“The tool would also enable people to donate their data to an academic research study that explores how this increased control affects user behavior and well-being. Zuckerman hasn’t released the tool, however, out of fear that Meta will sue him if he does so,” a statement from the Knight Insitute explained.
Meta has done this in the past. “A U.K. developer, Luis Barclay, released a similar tool, called Unfollow Everything, but he took it down in 2021, fearing a lawsuit after receiving a cease-and-desist letter and a lifetime Facebook ban from Meta, then called Facebook Inc.,” AP News reported.
Meta, however, has denied any previous third-party apps of this type in the past citing safety and privacy concerns. This is likely the argument the company will make in court to keep Zuckerman’s app off of their site.
The pressure to make social media less addictive, however, is coming from many sources, and the ability to turn off the algorithm may be federally mandated in the future.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Forty-one states and the District of Columbia are suing Meta for building addictive features into its technology that harm children’s well-being.
“Our bipartisan investigation has arrived at a solemn conclusion: Meta has been harming our children and teens, cultivating addiction to boost corporate profits,” said California Attorney General Rob Bonta.
“We have a youth mental health crisis in the United States,” added Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser. “The young people were brought down rabbit holes.”
To hold Meta accountable for this alleged business practice, thirty-three states are filing a joint lawsuit against the company, while eight states and Washington D.C. are filing separate complaints in federal, state or local courts.
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