Legal action against Meta questions whether Facebook users have the authority to manage their feeds

The battle for control over social media feeds has taken a new turn with a lawsuit filed against Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook. The lawsuit, brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University on behalf of an Amherst professor, challenges the idea that users have little control over what they see on their feeds.

The lawsuit centers around a tool called Unfollow Everything 2.0, which would allow Facebook users to unfollow friends, groups, and pages, effectively emptying their newsfeed. The goal of the tool is to give users the power to control their own experience on the platform, rather than being at the mercy of Facebook’s algorithm.

This isn’t the first time such a tool has been proposed. A U.K. developer released a similar tool in 2021 but took it down after receiving a cease-and-desist letter from Meta. Now, the Amherst professor, Ethan Zuckerman, is taking preemptive legal action to avoid a similar fate.

The lawsuit hinges on a provision of the Communications Decency Act that provides immunity to software developers who create tools to filter objectionable content. Zuckerman argues that users should have the right to filter out content they find objectionable on social media platforms.

While Meta has declined to comment on the lawsuit, Zuckerman and the Knight Institute are pushing for users to have more control over their social media experience. They believe that users should have the right to decide what they see on the platform, rather than being forced to accept it as it is given to them.

The outcome of this lawsuit could have far-reaching implications for how users interact with social media platforms and could pave the way for more tools that give users greater control over their feeds.