Facebook Bans Developer Behind Unfollow Everything Tool (theverge.com) 84
A developer who made a tool that let people automatically unfollow friends and groups on Facebook says he's been banned permanently from the social networking site. From a report: Louis Barclay was the creator of "Unfollow Everything," a browser extension that allowed Facebook users to essentially delete their News Feed by unfollowing all their connections at once. Facebook allows users to individually unfollow friends, groups, and pages, which removes their content from the News Feed, the algorithmically-controlled heart of Facebook. Barclay's tool automated this process, instantly wiping users' News Feed.
[...] In response, Facebook sent Barclay a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year, saying he'd violated the site's terms of service by creating software that automated user interactions. Barclay says the company then "permanently disabled my Facebook and Instagram accounts" and "demanded that I agree to never again create tools that interact with Facebook or its other services."
[...] In response, Facebook sent Barclay a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year, saying he'd violated the site's terms of service by creating software that automated user interactions. Barclay says the company then "permanently disabled my Facebook and Instagram accounts" and "demanded that I agree to never again create tools that interact with Facebook or its other services."
Its lowkey amusing in a way (Score:5, Funny)
Any unified solution to the Facebook problems? (Score:2)
Mod parent Funny, though I confess it took me a bit of effort to get the joke. Since I don't have a follow-on joke (as sadly usual) I'm going to poke at the topic from another direction. Mostly because I was thinking about the topic Subject this morning as a trigger for Betteridge's Law.
Mostly I was thinking about ISNS (Imaginary SNS <> Facebook) that only discloses my personal information in a reciprocal manner. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours", as the children used to say. This ISNS would a
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NAK
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While it's tempting to look at a service and try to remake it slightly better, it seems like social networks tend to get replaced by services that are actually fairly different. TicTok and Instagram have taken over a lot of Facebook's marketshare (which is part of why Facebook bought Instagram), but they don't really provide the same service.
Instead of trying to rebuild Facebook, think about what you actually want out of social networking and look for (or create) services that do that better, perhaps in a v
Just use something like WinAutomation (Score:1)
I imagine even non-coders could create a decent unfollow script in under a couple hours.
Re:Just use something like WinAutomation (Score:4, Informative)
I don't understand what the point of unfollowing everything is, but here's a really simple script to do it [github.com].
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Or you could just not use Facebook.
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Can we add such working in a browser header sent to each visited site ? If the site doesn't agree with the EULA (or maybe ESLA?) , they should not use the services of your browser.
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Can we add such working in a browser header sent to each visited site ? If the site doesn't agree with the EULA (or maybe ESLA?) , they should not use the services of your browser.
It would almost be as pointless as the Do Not Track setting when turned on.
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It'd be nice if you could unilaterally do that, but there are still such things as Terms Of Service.
For the sequel (Score:1)
He's going to make an automated Facebook account creator.
Just use a different name and carry on
Sounds about right. (Score:5, Insightful)
I use Facebook regularly, but long ago manually unfollowed nearly all of my Facebook friends, groups, and liked pages. It actually turned Facebook a useful social news aggregator for the remaining content that I followed (mostly groups related to my making hobbies) for me while still allowing me to post updates for my close friends and family, without being nearly as much of an addictive time sink.
But it took me several hours of tedious clicking.
During the process, it occurred to me that Facebook had likely intentionally made this process difficult to do, since it would be trivial to make it much easier. I thought about making a Facebook app to automate the process, but I knew that would be unlikely to last long. I thought about making a client-side script to automate it, but again, I figured there'd be repercussions. Making it easy for Facebook users to easily mass-curate their own news feed would be directly counter to Facebook's adversarial business model of addicting people into getting their social dopamine fix regularly. This just confirms it.
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Re: Sounds about right. (Score:3)
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I keep posting this every so often, is a hosts file a something people don't know about?
cat
# localhost is used to configure the loopback interface
127.0.0.1 www.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 www.login.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 static.ak.connect.facebook.com
127.0.0.1 connect.facebook.net
127.0.0.1 www.connect.facebook.net
127.0.0.1 apps.facebook
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There are duplicates in that list, why?
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fore sure, for sure
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Actually, I can see someone being a really really smart ass,
and creating a virus that does these steps:
does not unfriend, most people still like to chat once or twice a year.
just unfollows and makes the news feed a worthless.
This would be the most evil thing I can think of. because nobody will notice and people might change in behavior.
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How do you keep Facebook from inserting "suggested stories" into your news feed? I like following my friends (they are my friends after all) but I really don't need to know about the latest pop star drama or touchdown, which Facebook seems to insist on inserting into my newsfeed uninvited. I really wish I could keep that out.
Re:Sounds about right. (Score:5, Informative)
How do you keep Facebook from inserting "suggested stories" into your news feed?
FB Purity [fbpurity.com] is a good one. They've had some pushback from Facebook officially, and it occasionally gets broken by changes to the site, but it's a good plugin.
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Thirded. FBPurity is excellent.
Fun fact, if you type "fbpurity.com" on Faceboot, it will flag it as a malware link.
However, FBP still has a page.
Curiously, Faceboot similarly censors links to "faceboot.com" with a malware warning. However, Facebook, Inc. owns the domain, and it just redirects to facebook.com. So, they're openly acknowledging their own site as malware.
"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- forever."
--Mark Zucker^H^H^H^H^HGeorge Orwell
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Demanded, or what? (Score:2)
[...] In response, Facebook sent Barclay a cease-and-desist letter earlier this year, saying he'd violated the site's terms of service by creating software that automated user interactions. Barclay says the company then "permanently disabled my Facebook and Instagram accounts" and "demanded that I agree to never again create tools that interact with Facebook or its other services."
Since it isn't a crime to make scripts that Facebook doesn't like, I think they just destroyed any leverage they had to keep him from making more of these tools :-)
They can ban him from the platform (Score:2)
Generally speaking fixing problems like this requires the federal government to step in because they're the only ones who have enough power to stand up to a major corporati
This just in: Man breaks terms of service on [site (Score:2)
Break rules, expect consequences.
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What rules? And don't point to rules created after the fact and then applied retroactively.
News feed? (Score:2)
same here (Score:2)
"The Feed Is For Cattle"
And if he doesn't comply? (Score:4, Interesting)
What if he doesn't comply? Do they plan to double-dare ban him? You can't kill me twice, ya know?
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He can't have instragram, but they can sign him up for more nastygrams from their lawyers.
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Trespassing how? He is basically designing a tool that others use to do whatever. If someone uses a gun to rob a bank, do you sue Smith&Wesson?
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Sure, if he was logging in to facebook, but he's not.
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And then handing the people going in a way to avoid having to listen to the ads played on the radio? Because he doesn't go into the bar anymore.
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Tresspassing? It doesn't work that way.. Didn't 20 years ago and doesn't now.
This is why monolithic social networks are bad. (Score:2)
This is why giant corporations whose popularity depends on their popularity are bad. Facebook is popular because everybody is on Facebook, and everybody is on Facebook because Facebook is popular. The network effects make it nearly impossible for anyone to escape their near-monopoly long-term, and make competition challenging, if not impossible.
And because Facebook knows that these interactions are part of what makes their service addictive, they won't allow anyone to make it easier to limit those intera
Block shared pages (Score:2)
What I really want is to block all the shared pages. Sometimes when I click the options for a post, it lets me hide all from that page, but even then sometimes it decides to show them to me anyway. Usually it only lets me hide all from whoever posted it to that page (or my friend). Generally I only want to see what my friends actually posted, not what they shared from some meme site. FB Purity helps a lot, but isn't perfect.
C&D Letter is Preposterous (Score:5, Informative)
You can see the cease and desist letter here. https://louisbarclay.notion.si... [notion.site]
IANAL but this looks like a load of complete BS. They don't give any grounds for the complaint and make a load of ludicrous demands.
One of demands looks very much like restraint of trade. You "... will not in the future offer, transfer, market, sell, or offer to sell any services related to Facebook or Instagram".
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LOL I love the part at the end, after making a number of unreasonable demands, it says, "Even if you do everything we ask, we offer you nothing in exchange, and retain our right to sue you for any reason."
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They don't have him by the balls, from my reading he didn't even violate the terms of service.
So to fix it for you:
You must not be familiar with people who want you to think they've got you by the balls.
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I, for one, "... will not in the future offer, transfer, market, sell, or offer to sell any services related to Facebook or Instagram".
Nor will I use any services related to Facebook or Instagram.
I have already perma-banned myself from these sites.
And I quite like it that way.
Re: C&D Letter is Preposterous (Score:2)
I "unliked" Facebook a long time ago, and I don't miss that shitfest one bit.
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if we all draw all our cash from the bank at once, that ecosystem is effectively broken. this is a tool for junkies who got bored but want to keep being junkies. everything is working splendidly.
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Re: I mean... of course they banned him (Score:2)
"You are the product"
The masses are even dumber than I thought, because I would expect a statement like this to creep out most normal people.
Just stop using it. (Score:2)
I've found that I do my 'posts' on twitter and LinkedIn now, and post nothing to facebook. I've stopped even reading the feed. If my friends and relatives having anything important to say, they will message me or family group. Just give it up, Facebook is a waste of energy
Re:Just stop using it. (Score:4)
Don't have to stop using it. Never found a good enough reason to START using it.
And to date, I haven't found any great gaps in my life that have tempted me to change my mind....
Banning (Score:2)
Isn't that just an extreme form of unfollowing everything? I'd say Barclay's unfollow tool is an unqualified success.
I'd like to get banned from Facebook as well. But it's my understanding that one has to sign up for it first. And I just can't bring myself to do that.
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I'd like to get banned from Facebook as well. But it's my understanding that one has to sign up for it first. And I just can't bring myself to do that.
It would be a very interesting exercise to see if one could get their shadow profile [makeuseof.com] banned without ever signing up for a Facebook account.
So wait.... (Score:2)
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They banned a person for making a computer program that allows users to do something simply and quickly, instead of arduously and slowly, that affects their ability to make money.
More tools like this (Score:2)
FB's playing Whack a mole but... (Score:2)
Here's a link to the code:
https://gist.github.com/renest... [github.com]
It's just a ban on automization (Score:2)
In a better world... (Score:4, Interesting)
In a better world Facebook would say, "huh, that's interesting, I wonder what's driving that? Do we have a problem?"
But, of course, not in this world.
Part of what keeps people coming to facebook is that it is, unfortunately, still the best way to keep in touch with people who are far away. You get snippets that are valuable, but which you wouldn't call or email someone over. "Hey my buddy in central america went kite boarding today!"
People stay with the platform for that reason despite the massive ration of shit that it throws at them. Facebook, of course, would love to completely eliminate that aspect of the platform. Deprioritize friend updates, randomly hide shit from people you follow, show groups and news bullshit first.
This seems like a reaction to facebook's insanely annoying algorithm. I think facebook would do well to keep in mind how critical friend activity is to the value the platform provides.
Of course they did (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe I'm in the minority, but ... (Score:3)
I've (literally) never used Facebook, but this seems like a good thing. Like with Windows 10 Update now telling me my PC doesn't currently meet all the system requirements for Windows 11 with a little red "X" next to it. I feel like it should be a green check mark ... :-)
Weapon of Mass Destruction (Score:3)
Facebook probably is scared shitless of making it easier for individual people to purge Facebook, but for bonus points, imagine the following scenario:
An automated attacker using compromised credentials of tens of thousands of people coupled with an unfollow utility like this plugin to mass delete whole networks of people off of Facebook simultaneously.
It'd be like dropping a nuke... from orbit... you know, just to make sure...
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We have a descision to make (Score:2)
We are now at a crossroads here with only two streets to go down:
1- Keep dealing with an internet that is only going to get more user hostile, more government/corporation control freak friendly, more privacy invading, more manipulative, more everything that no sane decent person ever wanted.
2- Start over from scratch, with a firmly enforced "Users' Bill of Rights" to prevent the aforementioned abuses.