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Facebook banned me for life because I help people use it less

620 points by louisbarclay 5y ago

cycomanic 5y ago
For all the people defending Facebook here, the point is not that they banned his account they threatened to sue him and send a ridiculously broad cease and desist. By your arguments ad networks have the right to sue adblock developers (which sometimes also collect anonymous data).
andyxor 5y ago
as long as social media company stays in the news it's alive and kicking, no one talks about dying companies. Time to buy more FB stock.
marton_s 5y ago
I’ve unfollowed everyone on Facebook several years ago using a JavaScript for loop on the dev console and my usage dropped to a total of few hours yearly (excluding Messenger). Sad that the extension was taken down but power users should still be able to do it eg. using snippets linked in this thread.
HappySweeney 5y ago
Does anyone know if you get a shadow profile if you are banned? Further, if you have a shadow profile, then create an account which is somehow linked to it, will it be deleted if you are then subsequently banned?
- javajosh 5y ago
  Every human being on Earth has a Facebook profile, living or dead, active or inactive on the platform. "Deletion" does not apply.
patwillson22 5y ago
ayy man, you crossed zucc, you get the buck.
vondro 5y ago
Did a manual unfollow few years ago. Has been great experience since then - no facebook addiction anymore, instantly! For anyone wondering didn't I delete it altogether - I find facebook very useful once I can control how I use it. I can still organize event there, visit pages I want. Some restaurants only have facebook page, etc. Once there is no addiction anymore, it's kinda like having a superpower. You control the tool, not the other way round.
dymk 5y ago
The author seems to think that Facebook has some obligation to let them use their platform.
- failuser 5y ago
  Their actions are compared against their promises. They don’t reply to such accusations with “yes, we feed on disinformation and suffering”, just this week their spokespeople went on TV and confirmed their commitment to putting people before profit. They try really hard to pretend not to abuse their market share.
- kiryin 5y ago
  This same old comment seems to show up in these threads like clockwork. Surely no one in this world is truly obligated to do anything at all, but kicking out users based on vague reasoning detriments their value as a social network.
- mahmoudhossam 5y ago
  Facebook seems to aspire to be a utility that everyone relies on, public utilities don't boot you out because you criticize them.
  - thieving_magpie 5y ago
    This isn't about criticism though. It's about changing their product.
    - mullingitover 5y ago
      It's not doing anything that you can't do yourself, it just automates what would normally be thousands of clicks. The fact that you can't express your intent to facebook to do this and have them assist by doing it for you automatically you reveals their user-hostility in this area.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      It isn't changing thier product, it's just empowering their users in a way they don't like.
oh_sigh 5y ago
Unfollow everything is actually how I have my facebook set up, but I did it manually by hiding users any time I saw someone post something that I didn't care about (ie baby announcement is fine, you selling sunglasses or posting a picture of your feet or your political regurgitations is not interesting to me). Now, I have zero elements in my feed, and it is great. Occasionally the person who posts something big once every 2 years will show up in my feed, but that is usually the content I want to see. I'm curious if the app could have been banned for some other reason. For example, what if it would just send 1000 unsubscribe requests instantaneously and was considered abuse?
mullingitover 5y ago
Holy crap, it's downright offensive that Facebook doesn't offer this utility as a first-party feature. Beyond the pale that they'd ban someone for creating it. Unfollowing everyone and everything is how I managed to make Facebook a non-net negative in my life, and I recommend it strongly to everyone.
- asdff 5y ago
  Do you still get the random sponsored posts though? Honestly that's the bulk of my junk. I don't even follow these posts, they just appear because I guess other people fitting my demographic profile like to watch these and fb shoehorns them in. Maybe I can set up a ublock rule to catch these but knowing fb they are wise to this arms race already.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    I've seen a massive uptick in those lately.
colpabar 5y ago
As much as I loathe the "facebook is a private company that can do whatever they want" argument, I have to admit it applies here. If I owned a store, and some guy kept coming and showing customers how to not spend any money in my store, I'd kick that guy out of my store. I very strongly dislike facebook and can't wait to watch it die, so I know comparing it to a store is a poor comparison. But at the end of the day, fb is a business, and if someone is using fb to try and hurt their business, they have the right to terminate that guy's accounts. EDIT My point here is not that we shouldn't point out bad things facebook does simply because it's "just business". I agree that the "they're a business" argument is just a deflection that derails the conversation into some weird business practice discussion, instead of all the bad things fb does. My point is more that we should try to frame these things so that the headline isn't "facebook banned me". They ban people all the time and not that many people seem to care, and in this case, of course they banned this guy.
- T-28788821 5y ago
  We'll. I wouldn't want to compare Facebook to a store, If anything Facebook is an equivalent of a drug store and drugs should always be restricted due to the negative effects they bring about on their consumers. Facebook by-law must display a banner written "Facebook is harmful for your mental health" and children should require parental supervision at all time.
- tylerhou 5y ago
  Facebook certainly has the right to ban this extension, but then we can't take their leadership seriously when they claim that they care about their users' health and well-being over profits. I.e. the point is the hypocrisy.
  - colpabar 5y ago
    Oh yeah I agree 100%. I guess I should have also included that I have 0 faith in anything fb says, and that I believe any and all of their claims of "we care and we're working on it" are outright lies. i.e. I'm so used to the hypocrisy that I don't really think about it, because everything they do is bad.
docflabby 5y ago
Facebook has become MySpace it just doesn't realize it yet...
- SllX 5y ago
  MySpace became “MySpace” in your example because there was Facebook to compare it to. MySpace was absolutely beloved by the people that used it at the time despite all of its faults. So what’s the “Facebook” that makes Facebook look like MySpace here? They have PR problems but that’s it. MySpace lost in the market.
  - docflabby 5y ago
    Facebook is in the process of "losing the market" My feed has slowly died on its own with no intervention as people seem to have disengaged with it, none of my friends post anymore or if they do Facebook doesn't want to show me. I only use it as a Gumtree replacement now to sell stuff because eBay got too expensive/annoying...
    - SllX 5y ago
      You make a very adulterous point. There was too a point where MySpace did feel stale. An anecdote isn’t data, but now you have me curious what the data looks like.
Barrin92 5y ago
I'm not even sure what rule this is supposed to break. I can't run an extension in my browser that automates button clicking on a website? So Facebook is cool with me manually unfollowing everyone and wasting five hours of my life but I can't do it automatically?
- sircastor 5y ago
  Yes. Facebook wants disengagement to be high-friction. They want you to feel the pain of disconnecting because they don't want you to do it.
  - CoryAlexMartin 5y ago
    A few years ago I had decided that I was going to deactivate my Facebook account. In the process, there was a page that displayed the names and profile pictures of a few of my friends, and told me, explicitly, that each of them would miss me. "John will miss you." "Mary will miss you." "Steve will miss you." "Greg will miss you." "Suzy will miss you." It was so transparently evil that I couldn't believe it.
    - jdiez17 5y ago
      Jeez, that is the dirtiest dark pattern I have heard of so far. Sounds like GLaDOS begging you not to destroy her personality cores [1] [1] https://youtu.be/4CdoufQu1ko https://youtu.be/4CdoufQu1ko
    - Barrin92 5y ago
      lol for some reason I picture this like one of the scenes out of a horror movie, all of your friends showing up wearing a nightgown with a blank stare going "don't go cory, we miss you, you can't leave us"
- PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  I don’t think he’d be in hot water if he simply developed a tool to hide the news feed. Developing a tool to automate API interactions and sending some of the user data to a 3rd party server (he claims to verify it was working) is a big no-no on any platform.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
The TL;DR is that the author created a browser extension that sent “unfollow” requests to everything in the user’s feed one-by-one. He argued that unfollowing everything made Facebook less addictive because it made the news feed empty. The tool also reported some amount of data about the user’s feed back to him for statistical purposes, but he claims the data was minimal and only used to ensure the tool was “working”. I think the missing piece of this puzzle might be that he used his personal account to develop Facebook API tools, and Facebook has a low tolerance for tools that abuse their API and send user data to 3rd parties, regardless of the developer’s intentions.
mullingitover 5y ago
For what it's worth, there's a plethora of scripts around that will assist you with this operation[1]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=unfollow+everyone+facebook+github&oq=unfollow+everyone+facebook+github https://www.google.com/search?q=unfollow+everyone+facebook+g...
yupyup54133 5y ago
Woops, loos like I was wrong: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
- akersten 5y ago
  This is misinformation. There is no such requirement. "Content neutral public utility platform" is not a legal concept and no similar concept is alluded to in CDA S230. Stop spreading this confident lie.
- not2b 5y ago
  You linked to an article that does not support what you say, as the EFF (who you link to) has repeatedly made clear. Nothing in section 230 requires a platform to be content neutral. It protects publishers who are blatantly biased as well as those that are neutral. For example, suppose you run a site that is dedicated to getting Republicans elected to office, must of the site content is user comments, and you ban users who criticize Republicans. So you are not content neutral. Section 230 still protects you: if a comment libels someone, the person that posted it, not the site, is legally responsible.
- kylepdm 5y ago
  That's quite literally not how 230 works, and completely ignores the historical reasons of why 230 was created. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Facebook needs to act as a content neutral public utility platform if they want to remain protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. No, they don't. The EFF would be lying if they said this, which, however, they do not anywhwere in the piece you link to support this assertion. Not only does Section 230 explicitly protect non-content-neutral actions [0], the legislative history and context of Section 230 and the Communications Decency Act as a whole—a censorship law whose twin functions were to impose public censorship and enable private censorship beyond what the state could even arguably Constitutionally impose (and every bit of which except the enablement of private censorship in Section 230 was struck down as exceeding Constitutional limits on public censorship)—makes clear that content neutrality was not only not the point, but the polar opposite of the point of the enactment. [0] 42 USC § 230(c)(2): “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”. If Facebook finds it objectionable for any reason, Facebook is explicitly protected under 230 for blocking it.
EverywhereTrip 5y ago
I did the same thing by hand, that the author wrote an extension for. It took me several weeks, but as something popped into my feed, I just unfollowed it.
ssalka 5y ago
I simply don't open Facebook unless I want to check a person's profile or view an event/page. But it's awful that Facebook would do something like this in response to what I can only imagine was (legally) totally acceptable use of their API. I also wonder if this tool broke any particular rule of FB's terms, or if the decision was more along the lines of, "you make us lose money, this app bad. Ban"
SavantIdiot 5y ago
Good thing you don't live in a country where Free Basic is the only internet: you would be banned from the internet! I find that a small, but nonzero, percentage of small business and organizations ONLY advertise on Facebook. Since I don't use it, I cannot access their pages (Facebook throws up a full screen blocker that I have to disable from the browser console by tweaking the DOM). Good thing Facebook isn't bigger.
- ghostly_s 5y ago
  What is Free Basic internet? Nothing's coming up on Google.
  - notRobot 5y ago
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-...
    - dmonitor 5y ago
      Is this just the plot of parks and recreation's last season?
- tim333 5y ago
  I think no such countries exist so the chances are low.
emaro 5y ago
I can really recommend you to look into the fediverse. You won't need to fight against your social network platform. https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org https://fediverse.party https://fediverse.party
- pmlnr 5y ago
  LOL. That's never that easy. "A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy" (PDF): https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisitsownworstenemy.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit...
- pndy 5y ago
  I've decided to filter out stuff on mastodon because what I saw was way too obnoxious for my taste. And trying to look up at federated timeline was like travelling via some porn-driven twitter fork. It feels like filters not only limited content for me but also magically limited my profile visibility because of these filters which should be in theory private. The idea of federated services, social media is great but for me at the moment, it doesn't feel like content is different - only the means of delivering it were changed.
btown 5y ago
Luckily, in the words of Mr. Universe, "you can't stop the signal." https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28#gistcomment-3908236 https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28#gis...
- dstroot 5y ago
  "Facebook will block this feature for you while you use it, depending on how much entities you try to unfollow. It automatically unblocks in a couple of hours and you will be able to continue." Never that simple is it...
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  Awesome, it works. Thanks! Notes: first go to facebook.com > arrow in upper right > Settings & Privacy > News Feed Preferences > and scroll the whole list to the bottom open your console and run the script, and wait. The script takes 1.5 seconds per each "unfollow", so if you have 500 for example, it will take more than 8 minutes :)
gwilikers 5y ago
The cease and desist, if anyone is interested in reading it: https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything-cease-and-desist-letter-from-Facebook-ea219169421b457bb7ce010b7bf9ce1f https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything-cease-a... The one that sticks out to me is: > Interfering with or impairing the intended operation of Facebook This seems very broad. I am sure Facebook has some legal standing for the takedown based on their terms of use and the extension's data collection. I wonder how far you can stretch "impairing the intended operation of Facebook", though.
- ferryman 5y ago
  For a company whose mission is "to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.".. this was very hostile & intimidating. I'm not surprised that the author(also the OP) prioritised his own resources, mental health over standing up and litigating. He's still brave to share this in the media!
ufo 5y ago
Does anyone know what is the difference between unfollowing everything vs hiding the news feed using CSS?
- sircastor 5y ago
  It would be more surprising (to me) if Facebook were monitoring hiding things in the news feed - they're a database query away from knowing what you've unfollowed. Knowing what's hidden is an active request back to the server to report which elements now have been hidden. The other side is that things that are unfollowed aren't ever sent to your browser...
tompainetoday 5y ago
Creating automation tools has been against their rules forever.
- asdff 5y ago
  I call B.S. on that one. How do you think large commercial accounts make posts on facebook and instagram and other places? It's not from writing and posting right then like you and I. Social media managers use third party tools where they can write a bunch of posts in advance and have them drip fed out at peak hours over time. That's automatic tooling too, yet facebook tolerates it because advertisers rely on it rather than users like the case of the OP extension.
  - tompainetoday 5y ago
    through the api
    - pmlnr 5y ago
      you mean automating through the api.
      - tompainetoday 5y ago
        some parts, but I believe any comments done through automation are strictly limited. the issue in this case seems to be the guy wrote a plugin that interacted with the front end, which, again, has always been strictly prohibited, and commonly results in bans from the platform.
        pmlnr 5y ago
        Are you some fb zealot? The API used to provide all these things, when suddenly FB decided people shouldn't have access to their own thing. No wonder they make workarounds, because they HAD that kind of access in the past.
thomaslangston 5y ago
I did this manually a while back. Can confirm it helped me curb my Facebook use.
htrp 5y ago
>Pointing to a provision in its terms of service that purports to bind even former users of Facebook, Facebook also demanded that I never again create a tool that interacts with Facebook or its many other services in any way. I want to know 1) what this ToS clause is and 2) how this is even possible?
Zigurd 5y ago
It is not a crime in the US to fail to delete posts encouraging crimes, up to and including genocide, outside the US. In practical terms, US law enforcement cannot monitor for this in foreign languages. Even if US regulations prohibited this, enforcement would be difficult in practice without Facebook's willing and diligent cooperation, and some tool smithing on Facebook's part. There are vast areas that are legal, surrounded by areas that are unenforceable, further extended to areas where consequences are cheaper than compliance. Facebook can allow all that to happen. Should they?
asdff 5y ago
Facebook is a public company. What happens if OP buys a share? Facebook bans shareholders now from using the product they partially own?
- shrimpx 5y ago
  Not defending Facebook but shareholders aren’t exempt from abiding by ToS.
joelbondurant 5y ago
[dead]
nnm 5y ago
There are two facts A (my tool can help people use FB less) and B (FB banned me), and then tell people A caused B, i.e. A --> B. In reality, it could be C --> B and C (I collect user data in a way not allowed per FB ToS) is not mentioned at all in the story-telling.
tunesmith 5y ago
I unfollowed everyone (manually) a couple of years ago and it was a big benefit - my feed was empty and it was great. However, Facebook has changed things over the last few months, my feed is now littered with recommendations of weird groups and content that I "might like".
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  Serious question, why use Facebook at all?
  - Jenda_ 5y ago
    For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, a famous biology professor was posting valuable information on his Facebook account. Reading the older posts and/or comments requires logging in. Another example, a local hiking club is cooperating planned trips via Facebook. If anyone wants to join, they have no other option (maybe they can persuade someone already joined to forward the information to them via other means).
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Consider becoming a cashier at a liquor store.
hikerclimber1 5y ago
I agree.
wilburTheDog 5y ago
I don't use facebook. I never plan to use facebook. What's stopping me from publishing Unfollow Everything myself? What standing would Facebook have to sue me for publishing a chrome extension?
- ekimekim 5y ago
  > What standing would Facebook have to sue me for publishing a chrome extension? The standing of "actually none, but if you go to court to prove this you risk bankrupcy". Unless you have a major legal organization (like EFF) backing you (or you are a billionare), large corporations are essentially above the law when it comes to interacting with individuals.
_gohp 5y ago
I have seen some very sophisticated bots generating Instagram content, it's always similar, but avoids detection, obviously (proven by the presence of the profiles). I wonder what would happen if people sent messages to each other on how to delete the fb account, or if a similarly good bot would do that. After all, it's just a post. Today I've seen Zuckerbergs reply to the accusation of posting enraging content, he said it doesn't make sense to claim so as the advertisers don't want to see their ads on enraging content. Typical, total liar. The ads are posted to neutral or non enraging content, while the enraging content gets no ads or only from the advertisers which don't mind. Guy is worse than 1000 used cars salesmen and 1000 wall street bankers combined. And all this with the innocent geek persona.
cratermoon 5y ago
I wonder how long before Social Fixer is banned? https://socialfixer.com/ https://socialfixer.com/
- mattkruse 5y ago
  Creator of Social Fixer here. I've been around over 10 years and made it through multiple attempts to shut me down, remove my pages, and a c&d. With several hundred thousand users, I think they know that I will make some noise if they come after me again. ;)
  - cratermoon 5y ago
    Awesome. What's the chance that Social Fixer could incorporate the kind of automatic unfollow discussed here without incurring the wrath of Facebook?
    - mattkruse 5y ago
      I won't do features like this, partly for this reason. A feature like this hits their API through code, and that is the part that probably got it shut down. Years ago, I got a similar complaint from Facebook - that my code was calling their API repeatedly, and this was not allowed. I changed my code to not do things like this, in order to stay alive. So I avoid any features that would make repeated calls to their API to make changes on the user's behalf.
    - mattkruse 5y ago
      The other reason, btw, is because I don't want to be responsible for taking "destructive" action. If a user misunderstands a feature and doesn't know why they don't see their friend in their newsfeed anymore, I don't want to be responsible for that. I will never unlike, never unfriend, never unfollow, etc. I won't even trigger positive actions automatically. This is the kind of thing Facebook really cracks down on, and because it's very fragile, a change in their API could cause the wrong behavior from a browser extension. It's not worth it.
csk111165 5y ago
Well I guess this seems to be quite unlawful and it reflects the true moto and intension of this evil aimed company, which just want to play with its users mentally and psychologically. This should not have happened , we have evolved our generation to come up to this?? What a petty!!
887139234 5y ago
what does it mean to be banned, really? can't you sign up again with another email address?
pmlnr 5y ago
> Pointing to a provision in its terms of service that purports to bind even former users of Facebook, Facebook also demanded that I never again create a tool that interacts with Facebook or its many other services in any way. The what? How on Earth is that legal in any country?
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  If I go to Zuck's Family Grocery Store, and break a bunch of stuff, or just cause a ruckus, they can ask me to leave. They can even tell me that I am no longer welcome in their store. If I go to a website, and cause a problem, I can be IP banned forever. Why shouldn't Facebook be able to say, "Don't ever use our service again"? It's their service
  - pmlnr 5y ago
    FB is not in any way a "Family Grocery Store", at maximum a self storage facility with glass walls. For the rest see sibling comment and the wheelchair analogy.
  - ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
    you're describing the "dude got banned" part the other part is "dude is threatened with a lawsuit if anything he ever codes ever touches anything facebook, even if he himself never uses it" the store analogy is bad anyways -- I could try to correct it, but it's so non-analogous that the result would be contrived and convoluted the key point is that I, as someone who wants to use his browser extension to make my facebook experience healthier, no longer can do so because facebook banned me from using the tool, too so I guess a horrible store analogy would be, the store disallows me from using a wheelchair to access their store if he built the wheelchair, and also if he builds the wheelchair he gets sued it's just like the most recent facebook whistleblower said: facebook prioritizes profits over user safety, and will until they are forced to prioritize user safety higher -- just like OSHA made companies do for employees, the FDA made food and drug companies do for users, etc.
  - unethical_ban 5y ago
    I think your analogy is incorrect. That would be like a shop-owner trying to sue someone who makes a lock-picking set for their model of locks. At the end of the day, it is the owner of the account running this tool, and FB is saying "don't tell people how to use JS to auto-unfollow people or we'll sue you". It's an extreme measure.
slackstation 5y ago
All this discussion and I just want the extension. The clearly banned it because their analytics showed how effective it was in actually reducing people's usage of the platform.
gweinberg 5y ago
I think most people here are missing the important takeaway: you can improve your facebook experience by unfollowing everything. I get the same effect via a slightly different route: my bookmark sends me straight to my group, and I never go "home".
rektomatic 5y ago
I wish he would put the code out on github, does tht break laws if its not actively doing it?
menimax 5y ago
And what if that guy don’t give a f, what his e-mailbox has received? And what if he creates stuff under nickname? Really wonder how fb are going in court let’s say after extension is being created and spread by ltd or on the names of people without property? Those “we will sue in court”, I wouldn’t care less, and laugh if it’s from fb.
menimax 5y ago
Can’t believe most of you fall for this. How can you care what your e-mail box receives? Why not create and publish from nickname, and violete the f out of fb, they can’t do a sh... And what can fb do to a limited company with no capital, when they tell them to go in court as much as they want?
rektomatic 5y ago
Just put the code out in open source, I don’t see how that could be subject to a cease and desist
chkaloon 5y ago
I started doing this manually by creating a bookmark folder with links to individuals and groups in Facebook. Rather than just open FB and see the lousy news feed, I just click on my finite list of links to catch up. No ads, much less time.
mastef 5y ago
It takes 2 clicks in uBlock Origin to filter out the news feed element.
raxxorrax 5y ago
How petty of them. See it as some form of validation, they wouldn't have done it if you didn't have a point. Bad for reaching out to those that might need it though.
mrwww 5y ago
the very idea that you can be sued for making a tool to help people automate their computer use is such bs. Isn't computers kinda about helping people simplify and automate things to begin with?
ladyattis 5y ago
This is why I don't use Facebook other than to keep up with my immediate family. They all know how to reach me via texting so Facebook Inc better get use to a world that increasingly stops using them or even allowing them to creep along their own services.

620 points by louisbarclay 5y ago

For all the people defending Facebook here, the point is not that they banned his account they threatened to sue him and send a ridiculously broad cease and desist. By your arguments ad networks have the right to sue adblock developers (which sometimes also collect anonymous data).

andyxor 5y ago

as long as social media company stays in the news it's alive and kicking, no one talks about dying companies. Time to buy more FB stock.

marton_s 5y ago

I’ve unfollowed everyone on Facebook several years ago using a JavaScript for loop on the dev console and my usage dropped to a total of few hours yearly (excluding Messenger). Sad that the extension was taken down but power users should still be able to do it eg. using snippets linked in this thread.

HappySweeney 5y ago

Does anyone know if you get a shadow profile if you are banned? Further, if you have a shadow profile, then create an account which is somehow linked to it, will it be deleted if you are then subsequently banned?

javajosh 5y ago
Every human being on Earth has a Facebook profile, living or dead, active or inactive on the platform. "Deletion" does not apply.

patwillson22 5y ago

ayy man, you crossed zucc, you get the buck.

vondro 5y ago

Did a manual unfollow few years ago. Has been great experience since then - no facebook addiction anymore, instantly! For anyone wondering didn't I delete it altogether - I find facebook very useful once I can control how I use it. I can still organize event there, visit pages I want. Some restaurants only have facebook page, etc. Once there is no addiction anymore, it's kinda like having a superpower. You control the tool, not the other way round.

dymk 5y ago

The author seems to think that Facebook has some obligation to let them use their platform.

failuser 5y ago
Their actions are compared against their promises. They don’t reply to such accusations with “yes, we feed on disinformation and suffering”, just this week their spokespeople went on TV and confirmed their commitment to putting people before profit. They try really hard to pretend not to abuse their market share.
kiryin 5y ago
This same old comment seems to show up in these threads like clockwork. Surely no one in this world is truly obligated to do anything at all, but kicking out users based on vague reasoning detriments their value as a social network.
mahmoudhossam 5y ago
Facebook seems to aspire to be a utility that everyone relies on, public utilities don't boot you out because you criticize them.
- thieving_magpie 5y ago
  This isn't about criticism though. It's about changing their product.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    It's not doing anything that you can't do yourself, it just automates what would normally be thousands of clicks. The fact that you can't express your intent to facebook to do this and have them assist by doing it for you automatically you reveals their user-hostility in this area.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    It isn't changing thier product, it's just empowering their users in a way they don't like.

oh_sigh 5y ago

Unfollow everything is actually how I have my facebook set up, but I did it manually by hiding users any time I saw someone post something that I didn't care about (ie baby announcement is fine, you selling sunglasses or posting a picture of your feet or your political regurgitations is not interesting to me). Now, I have zero elements in my feed, and it is great. Occasionally the person who posts something big once every 2 years will show up in my feed, but that is usually the content I want to see. I'm curious if the app could have been banned for some other reason. For example, what if it would just send 1000 unsubscribe requests instantaneously and was considered abuse?

mullingitover 5y ago

Holy crap, it's downright offensive that Facebook doesn't offer this utility as a first-party feature. Beyond the pale that they'd ban someone for creating it. Unfollowing everyone and everything is how I managed to make Facebook a non-net negative in my life, and I recommend it strongly to everyone.

asdff 5y ago
Do you still get the random sponsored posts though? Honestly that's the bulk of my junk. I don't even follow these posts, they just appear because I guess other people fitting my demographic profile like to watch these and fb shoehorns them in. Maybe I can set up a ublock rule to catch these but knowing fb they are wise to this arms race already.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  I've seen a massive uptick in those lately.

colpabar 5y ago

As much as I loathe the "facebook is a private company that can do whatever they want" argument, I have to admit it applies here. If I owned a store, and some guy kept coming and showing customers how to not spend any money in my store, I'd kick that guy out of my store. I very strongly dislike facebook and can't wait to watch it die, so I know comparing it to a store is a poor comparison. But at the end of the day, fb is a business, and if someone is using fb to try and hurt their business, they have the right to terminate that guy's accounts. EDIT My point here is not that we shouldn't point out bad things facebook does simply because it's "just business". I agree that the "they're a business" argument is just a deflection that derails the conversation into some weird business practice discussion, instead of all the bad things fb does. My point is more that we should try to frame these things so that the headline isn't "facebook banned me". They ban people all the time and not that many people seem to care, and in this case, of course they banned this guy.

T-28788821 5y ago
We'll. I wouldn't want to compare Facebook to a store, If anything Facebook is an equivalent of a drug store and drugs should always be restricted due to the negative effects they bring about on their consumers. Facebook by-law must display a banner written "Facebook is harmful for your mental health" and children should require parental supervision at all time.
tylerhou 5y ago
Facebook certainly has the right to ban this extension, but then we can't take their leadership seriously when they claim that they care about their users' health and well-being over profits. I.e. the point is the hypocrisy.
- colpabar 5y ago
  Oh yeah I agree 100%. I guess I should have also included that I have 0 faith in anything fb says, and that I believe any and all of their claims of "we care and we're working on it" are outright lies. i.e. I'm so used to the hypocrisy that I don't really think about it, because everything they do is bad.

docflabby 5y ago

Facebook has become MySpace it just doesn't realize it yet...

SllX 5y ago
MySpace became “MySpace” in your example because there was Facebook to compare it to. MySpace was absolutely beloved by the people that used it at the time despite all of its faults. So what’s the “Facebook” that makes Facebook look like MySpace here? They have PR problems but that’s it. MySpace lost in the market.
- docflabby 5y ago
  Facebook is in the process of "losing the market" My feed has slowly died on its own with no intervention as people seem to have disengaged with it, none of my friends post anymore or if they do Facebook doesn't want to show me. I only use it as a Gumtree replacement now to sell stuff because eBay got too expensive/annoying...
  - SllX 5y ago
    You make a very adulterous point. There was too a point where MySpace did feel stale. An anecdote isn’t data, but now you have me curious what the data looks like.

Barrin92 5y ago

I'm not even sure what rule this is supposed to break. I can't run an extension in my browser that automates button clicking on a website? So Facebook is cool with me manually unfollowing everyone and wasting five hours of my life but I can't do it automatically?

sircastor 5y ago
Yes. Facebook wants disengagement to be high-friction. They want you to feel the pain of disconnecting because they don't want you to do it.
- CoryAlexMartin 5y ago
  A few years ago I had decided that I was going to deactivate my Facebook account. In the process, there was a page that displayed the names and profile pictures of a few of my friends, and told me, explicitly, that each of them would miss me. "John will miss you." "Mary will miss you." "Steve will miss you." "Greg will miss you." "Suzy will miss you." It was so transparently evil that I couldn't believe it.
  - jdiez17 5y ago
    Jeez, that is the dirtiest dark pattern I have heard of so far. Sounds like GLaDOS begging you not to destroy her personality cores [1] [1] https://youtu.be/4CdoufQu1ko https://youtu.be/4CdoufQu1ko
  - Barrin92 5y ago
    lol for some reason I picture this like one of the scenes out of a horror movie, all of your friends showing up wearing a nightgown with a blank stare going "don't go cory, we miss you, you can't leave us"
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
I don’t think he’d be in hot water if he simply developed a tool to hide the news feed. Developing a tool to automate API interactions and sending some of the user data to a 3rd party server (he claims to verify it was working) is a big no-no on any platform.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

The TL;DR is that the author created a browser extension that sent “unfollow” requests to everything in the user’s feed one-by-one. He argued that unfollowing everything made Facebook less addictive because it made the news feed empty. The tool also reported some amount of data about the user’s feed back to him for statistical purposes, but he claims the data was minimal and only used to ensure the tool was “working”. I think the missing piece of this puzzle might be that he used his personal account to develop Facebook API tools, and Facebook has a low tolerance for tools that abuse their API and send user data to 3rd parties, regardless of the developer’s intentions.

mullingitover 5y ago

For what it's worth, there's a plethora of scripts around that will assist you with this operation[1]. [1] https://www.google.com/search?q=unfollow+everyone+facebook+github&oq=unfollow+everyone+facebook+github https://www.google.com/search?q=unfollow+everyone+facebook+g...

yupyup54133 5y ago

Woops, loos like I was wrong: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...

akersten 5y ago
This is misinformation. There is no such requirement. "Content neutral public utility platform" is not a legal concept and no similar concept is alluded to in CDA S230. Stop spreading this confident lie.
not2b 5y ago
You linked to an article that does not support what you say, as the EFF (who you link to) has repeatedly made clear. Nothing in section 230 requires a platform to be content neutral. It protects publishers who are blatantly biased as well as those that are neutral. For example, suppose you run a site that is dedicated to getting Republicans elected to office, must of the site content is user comments, and you ban users who criticize Republicans. So you are not content neutral. Section 230 still protects you: if a comment libels someone, the person that posted it, not the site, is legally responsible.
kylepdm 5y ago
That's quite literally not how 230 works, and completely ignores the historical reasons of why 230 was created. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello-youve-been-referred-here-because-youre-wrong-about-section-230-communications-decency-act.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hello...
dragonwriter 5y ago
> Facebook needs to act as a content neutral public utility platform if they want to remain protected by section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. No, they don't. The EFF would be lying if they said this, which, however, they do not anywhwere in the piece you link to support this assertion. Not only does Section 230 explicitly protect non-content-neutral actions [0], the legislative history and context of Section 230 and the Communications Decency Act as a whole—a censorship law whose twin functions were to impose public censorship and enable private censorship beyond what the state could even arguably Constitutionally impose (and every bit of which except the enablement of private censorship in Section 230 was struck down as exceeding Constitutional limits on public censorship)—makes clear that content neutrality was not only not the point, but the polar opposite of the point of the enactment. [0] 42 USC § 230(c)(2): “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of— (A) any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected”. If Facebook finds it objectionable for any reason, Facebook is explicitly protected under 230 for blocking it.

EverywhereTrip 5y ago

I did the same thing by hand, that the author wrote an extension for. It took me several weeks, but as something popped into my feed, I just unfollowed it.

ssalka 5y ago

I simply don't open Facebook unless I want to check a person's profile or view an event/page. But it's awful that Facebook would do something like this in response to what I can only imagine was (legally) totally acceptable use of their API. I also wonder if this tool broke any particular rule of FB's terms, or if the decision was more along the lines of, "you make us lose money, this app bad. Ban"

SavantIdiot 5y ago

Good thing you don't live in a country where Free Basic is the only internet: you would be banned from the internet! I find that a small, but nonzero, percentage of small business and organizations ONLY advertise on Facebook. Since I don't use it, I cannot access their pages (Facebook throws up a full screen blocker that I have to disable from the browser console by tweaking the DOM). Good thing Facebook isn't bigger.

ghostly_s 5y ago
What is Free Basic internet? Nothing's coming up on Google.
- notRobot 5y ago
  https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-free-basics-india-zuckerberg https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/12/facebook-...
  - dmonitor 5y ago
    Is this just the plot of parks and recreation's last season?
tim333 5y ago
I think no such countries exist so the chances are low.

emaro 5y ago

I can really recommend you to look into the fediverse. You won't need to fight against your social network platform. https://joinmastodon.org https://joinmastodon.org https://fediverse.party https://fediverse.party

pmlnr 5y ago
LOL. That's never that easy. "A Group is Its Own Worst Enemy" (PDF): https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisitsownworstenemy.pdf https://www.gwern.net/docs/technology/2005-shirky-agroupisit...
pndy 5y ago
I've decided to filter out stuff on mastodon because what I saw was way too obnoxious for my taste. And trying to look up at federated timeline was like travelling via some porn-driven twitter fork. It feels like filters not only limited content for me but also magically limited my profile visibility because of these filters which should be in theory private. The idea of federated services, social media is great but for me at the moment, it doesn't feel like content is different - only the means of delivering it were changed.

btown 5y ago

Luckily, in the words of Mr. Universe, "you can't stop the signal." https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28#gistcomment-3908236 https://gist.github.com/renestalder/c5b77635bfbec8f94d28#gis...

dstroot 5y ago
"Facebook will block this feature for you while you use it, depending on how much entities you try to unfollow. It automatically unblocks in a couple of hours and you will be able to continue." Never that simple is it...
unethical_ban 5y ago
Awesome, it works. Thanks! Notes: first go to facebook.com > arrow in upper right > Settings & Privacy > News Feed Preferences > and scroll the whole list to the bottom open your console and run the script, and wait. The script takes 1.5 seconds per each "unfollow", so if you have 500 for example, it will take more than 8 minutes :)

gwilikers 5y ago

The cease and desist, if anyone is interested in reading it: https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything-cease-and-desist-letter-from-Facebook-ea219169421b457bb7ce010b7bf9ce1f https://louisbarclay.notion.site/Unfollow-Everything-cease-a... The one that sticks out to me is: > Interfering with or impairing the intended operation of Facebook This seems very broad. I am sure Facebook has some legal standing for the takedown based on their terms of use and the extension's data collection. I wonder how far you can stretch "impairing the intended operation of Facebook", though.

ferryman 5y ago
For a company whose mission is "to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together.".. this was very hostile & intimidating. I'm not surprised that the author(also the OP) prioritised his own resources, mental health over standing up and litigating. He's still brave to share this in the media!

ufo 5y ago

Does anyone know what is the difference between unfollowing everything vs hiding the news feed using CSS?

sircastor 5y ago
It would be more surprising (to me) if Facebook were monitoring hiding things in the news feed - they're a database query away from knowing what you've unfollowed. Knowing what's hidden is an active request back to the server to report which elements now have been hidden. The other side is that things that are unfollowed aren't ever sent to your browser...

tompainetoday 5y ago

Creating automation tools has been against their rules forever.

asdff 5y ago
I call B.S. on that one. How do you think large commercial accounts make posts on facebook and instagram and other places? It's not from writing and posting right then like you and I. Social media managers use third party tools where they can write a bunch of posts in advance and have them drip fed out at peak hours over time. That's automatic tooling too, yet facebook tolerates it because advertisers rely on it rather than users like the case of the OP extension.
- tompainetoday 5y ago
  through the api
  - pmlnr 5y ago
    you mean automating through the api.
    - tompainetoday 5y ago
      some parts, but I believe any comments done through automation are strictly limited. the issue in this case seems to be the guy wrote a plugin that interacted with the front end, which, again, has always been strictly prohibited, and commonly results in bans from the platform.
      - pmlnr 5y ago
        Are you some fb zealot? The API used to provide all these things, when suddenly FB decided people shouldn't have access to their own thing. No wonder they make workarounds, because they HAD that kind of access in the past.

thomaslangston 5y ago

I did this manually a while back. Can confirm it helped me curb my Facebook use.

htrp 5y ago

>Pointing to a provision in its terms of service that purports to bind even former users of Facebook, Facebook also demanded that I never again create a tool that interacts with Facebook or its many other services in any way. I want to know 1) what this ToS clause is and 2) how this is even possible?

Zigurd 5y ago

It is not a crime in the US to fail to delete posts encouraging crimes, up to and including genocide, outside the US. In practical terms, US law enforcement cannot monitor for this in foreign languages. Even if US regulations prohibited this, enforcement would be difficult in practice without Facebook's willing and diligent cooperation, and some tool smithing on Facebook's part. There are vast areas that are legal, surrounded by areas that are unenforceable, further extended to areas where consequences are cheaper than compliance. Facebook can allow all that to happen. Should they?

asdff 5y ago

Facebook is a public company. What happens if OP buys a share? Facebook bans shareholders now from using the product they partially own?

shrimpx 5y ago
Not defending Facebook but shareholders aren’t exempt from abiding by ToS.

joelbondurant 5y ago

[dead]

nnm 5y ago

There are two facts A (my tool can help people use FB less) and B (FB banned me), and then tell people A caused B, i.e. A --> B. In reality, it could be C --> B and C (I collect user data in a way not allowed per FB ToS) is not mentioned at all in the story-telling.

tunesmith 5y ago

I unfollowed everyone (manually) a couple of years ago and it was a big benefit - my feed was empty and it was great. However, Facebook has changed things over the last few months, my feed is now littered with recommendations of weird groups and content that I "might like".

brokenmachine 5y ago
Serious question, why use Facebook at all?
- Jenda_ 5y ago
  For example, at the beginning of the pandemic, a famous biology professor was posting valuable information on his Facebook account. Reading the older posts and/or comments requires logging in. Another example, a local hiking club is cooperating planned trips via Facebook. If anyone wants to join, they have no other option (maybe they can persuade someone already joined to forward the information to them via other means).

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Consider becoming a cashier at a liquor store.

hikerclimber1 5y ago

I agree.

wilburTheDog 5y ago

I don't use facebook. I never plan to use facebook. What's stopping me from publishing Unfollow Everything myself? What standing would Facebook have to sue me for publishing a chrome extension?

ekimekim 5y ago
> What standing would Facebook have to sue me for publishing a chrome extension? The standing of "actually none, but if you go to court to prove this you risk bankrupcy". Unless you have a major legal organization (like EFF) backing you (or you are a billionare), large corporations are essentially above the law when it comes to interacting with individuals.

_gohp 5y ago

I have seen some very sophisticated bots generating Instagram content, it's always similar, but avoids detection, obviously (proven by the presence of the profiles). I wonder what would happen if people sent messages to each other on how to delete the fb account, or if a similarly good bot would do that. After all, it's just a post. Today I've seen Zuckerbergs reply to the accusation of posting enraging content, he said it doesn't make sense to claim so as the advertisers don't want to see their ads on enraging content. Typical, total liar. The ads are posted to neutral or non enraging content, while the enraging content gets no ads or only from the advertisers which don't mind. Guy is worse than 1000 used cars salesmen and 1000 wall street bankers combined. And all this with the innocent geek persona.

cratermoon 5y ago

I wonder how long before Social Fixer is banned? https://socialfixer.com/ https://socialfixer.com/

mattkruse 5y ago
Creator of Social Fixer here. I've been around over 10 years and made it through multiple attempts to shut me down, remove my pages, and a c&d. With several hundred thousand users, I think they know that I will make some noise if they come after me again. ;)
- cratermoon 5y ago
  Awesome. What's the chance that Social Fixer could incorporate the kind of automatic unfollow discussed here without incurring the wrath of Facebook?
  - mattkruse 5y ago
    I won't do features like this, partly for this reason. A feature like this hits their API through code, and that is the part that probably got it shut down. Years ago, I got a similar complaint from Facebook - that my code was calling their API repeatedly, and this was not allowed. I changed my code to not do things like this, in order to stay alive. So I avoid any features that would make repeated calls to their API to make changes on the user's behalf.
  - mattkruse 5y ago
    The other reason, btw, is because I don't want to be responsible for taking "destructive" action. If a user misunderstands a feature and doesn't know why they don't see their friend in their newsfeed anymore, I don't want to be responsible for that. I will never unlike, never unfriend, never unfollow, etc. I won't even trigger positive actions automatically. This is the kind of thing Facebook really cracks down on, and because it's very fragile, a change in their API could cause the wrong behavior from a browser extension. It's not worth it.

csk111165 5y ago

Well I guess this seems to be quite unlawful and it reflects the true moto and intension of this evil aimed company, which just want to play with its users mentally and psychologically. This should not have happened , we have evolved our generation to come up to this?? What a petty!!

887139234 5y ago

what does it mean to be banned, really? can't you sign up again with another email address?

pmlnr 5y ago

> Pointing to a provision in its terms of service that purports to bind even former users of Facebook, Facebook also demanded that I never again create a tool that interacts with Facebook or its many other services in any way. The what? How on Earth is that legal in any country?

thesuitonym 5y ago
If I go to Zuck's Family Grocery Store, and break a bunch of stuff, or just cause a ruckus, they can ask me to leave. They can even tell me that I am no longer welcome in their store. If I go to a website, and cause a problem, I can be IP banned forever. Why shouldn't Facebook be able to say, "Don't ever use our service again"? It's their service
- pmlnr 5y ago
  FB is not in any way a "Family Grocery Store", at maximum a self storage facility with glass walls. For the rest see sibling comment and the wheelchair analogy.
- ImPostingOnHN 5y ago
  you're describing the "dude got banned" part the other part is "dude is threatened with a lawsuit if anything he ever codes ever touches anything facebook, even if he himself never uses it" the store analogy is bad anyways -- I could try to correct it, but it's so non-analogous that the result would be contrived and convoluted the key point is that I, as someone who wants to use his browser extension to make my facebook experience healthier, no longer can do so because facebook banned me from using the tool, too so I guess a horrible store analogy would be, the store disallows me from using a wheelchair to access their store if he built the wheelchair, and also if he builds the wheelchair he gets sued it's just like the most recent facebook whistleblower said: facebook prioritizes profits over user safety, and will until they are forced to prioritize user safety higher -- just like OSHA made companies do for employees, the FDA made food and drug companies do for users, etc.
- unethical_ban 5y ago
  I think your analogy is incorrect. That would be like a shop-owner trying to sue someone who makes a lock-picking set for their model of locks. At the end of the day, it is the owner of the account running this tool, and FB is saying "don't tell people how to use JS to auto-unfollow people or we'll sue you". It's an extreme measure.

slackstation 5y ago

All this discussion and I just want the extension. The clearly banned it because their analytics showed how effective it was in actually reducing people's usage of the platform.

gweinberg 5y ago

I think most people here are missing the important takeaway: you can improve your facebook experience by unfollowing everything. I get the same effect via a slightly different route: my bookmark sends me straight to my group, and I never go "home".

rektomatic 5y ago

I wish he would put the code out on github, does tht break laws if its not actively doing it?

menimax 5y ago

And what if that guy don’t give a f, what his e-mailbox has received? And what if he creates stuff under nickname? Really wonder how fb are going in court let’s say after extension is being created and spread by ltd or on the names of people without property? Those “we will sue in court”, I wouldn’t care less, and laugh if it’s from fb.

menimax 5y ago

Can’t believe most of you fall for this. How can you care what your e-mail box receives? Why not create and publish from nickname, and violete the f out of fb, they can’t do a sh... And what can fb do to a limited company with no capital, when they tell them to go in court as much as they want?

rektomatic 5y ago

Just put the code out in open source, I don’t see how that could be subject to a cease and desist

chkaloon 5y ago

I started doing this manually by creating a bookmark folder with links to individuals and groups in Facebook. Rather than just open FB and see the lousy news feed, I just click on my finite list of links to catch up. No ads, much less time.

mastef 5y ago

It takes 2 clicks in uBlock Origin to filter out the news feed element.

raxxorrax 5y ago

How petty of them. See it as some form of validation, they wouldn't have done it if you didn't have a point. Bad for reaching out to those that might need it though.

mrwww 5y ago

the very idea that you can be sued for making a tool to help people automate their computer use is such bs. Isn't computers kinda about helping people simplify and automate things to begin with?

ladyattis 5y ago

This is why I don't use Facebook other than to keep up with my immediate family. They all know how to reach me via texting so Facebook Inc better get use to a world that increasingly stops using them or even allowing them to creep along their own services.