“Unfollow Everything”
Facebook blocks developer who wanted to clean up the news feed
© Dominic Lipinski // Picture Alliance
User Louis Barclay invents a tool to clean up the Facebook feed and is banned from the platform for this. After months, he dares to go public.
Who does not know it? Lost in hours of scrolling through a seemingly endless Facebook feed. And suddenly you ask yourself: “How much time has actually just passed?” Facebook user Louis Barclay thought so too – and without further ado invented a tool to completely empty the feed.
Barclay was addicted to Facebook himself
Before Louis Barclay developed the “Unfollow Everything” program, he himself was addicted to Facebook, he writes in an online article. His main problem is the endless news feed, which is also referred to as the start page in the German Facebook version. To escape his addiction, the Briton first manually unfollowed all possible channels – and was enthusiastic: “I still remember the feeling when I unfollowed everything for the first time,” writes Barclay, “it was almost wonderful”.
Barclay wants to help other people – and is developing the tool
In order to save other users the time and effort that he had spent unfollowing, he decided to develop an automated tool for this. When the “Unfollow Everything” program went online in summer 2020, it quickly found countless followers. Among the reviews for the free program, Barclay finds comments such as “Thanks to you, I’m officially no longer addicted to Facebook!”
However: Facebook is not at all enthusiastic
After the tool had been online for around a year, Barcley received an unexpected mail from a law firm in July 2021. This gives him a warning on behalf of Facebook. Because the program he developed violates the Group’s trademark rights and terms of use. In addition, Barclays Facebook and Instagram accounts have been permanently deactivated. He is no longer allowed to use it. As a reason, Facebook cites that you should not do anything that “prevents, overloads or could impair the proper functioning or appearance of our products”.
Barclay in fear of litigation
The law firm’s letter requested the British start-up founder, on the one hand, to remove his program from the Chrome store, where it could be downloaded and installed. In addition, the Briton had to disclose all data related to his Instagram and Facebook accounts, as well as his programmed tool. Furthermore, he should delete any data that he has ever received from Facebook. Should Barclay ignore the demands, he threatens to litigation. To take legal action against the billion dollar company – he doesn’t dare to do that, according to Barclay. “The demands seemed extremely disproportionate to me,” he says in his article. But if Barclay lost a legal dispute with Facebook, he would have to pay the litigation costs personally.
He finally dares to go public
Barclay’s story of “Unfollow Everything” would probably never have been made public without legal assistance. But thanks to the help of Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute and a few British lawyers, Barclay began to feel safe enough to go public with the story. He finally describes the behavior of Facebook as “hostile to consumers” and criticizes how platforms of this kind bind users to themselves, but at the same time prevent them from deciding how they want to use the platforms.