There's nothing like a good "inside job"—a caper where someone tries to bamboozle or defeat a system from within. One guy found out the hard way, however, that Facebook doesn't really like that plot device:
If someone built a tool that made Facebook less addictive—a tool that allowed users to benefit from Facebook's positive features while limiting their exposure to its negative ones—how would Facebook respond?
I know the answer, because I built the tool, and Facebook squashed it. This summer, Facebook sent me a cease-and-desist letter threatening legal action. It permanently disabled my Facebook and Instagram accounts. And it demanded that I agree to never again create tools that interact with Facebook or its other services.
YIKES!
In a sense, you can kind of understand where Facebook is coming from; the news feed, as this developer points out, is a critical part of Facebook's cash flow:
The tool I created, a browser extension called Unfollow Everything, allowed users to delete their News Feed by unfollowing their friends, groups, and pages. The News Feed, as users of Facebook know, is that never-ending page that greets you when you log in. It's the central hub of Facebook. It's also a major source of revenue. As a Facebook whistleblower observed on 60 Minutes on Sunday, time spent on the platform translates to ads viewed and clicked on, which in turn translates to billions of dollars for Facebook. The News Feed is the thing that keeps people glued to the platform for hours on end, often on a daily basis; without it, time spent on the network would drop considerably.
Yet still, it's kind of telling that Facebook would go so far as to threaten to sue a fellow for trying to give users more control over their Facebook experience.
Why do you think they ultimately want you to have less, not more, authority over your news feed? What does that say about the company?
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