Facebook doesn't take kindly to people acting against business interests. According information, a software developer was banned for life from the platform for developing the “Unfollow Everything” browser extension that allowed users to limit negative Facebook features.
The developer told his story on Slate.com.
British developer Louis Barclay claims that Facebook has permanently suspended its account in response to a browser extension it has developed.
Barclay developed a browser extension called Simply Unfollow Everything that allows users to automatically remove it monitoring όλων των ειδήσεων τους. Το εργαλείο, ανέφερε ο Barclay, usesται επίσης από Ελβετούς researchers who study the relationship between Facebook use and happiness.
Barclay said Facebook (Perkins Coie)'s legal department sent him a letter of cessation in July. The letter accuses Barclay of allowing "unauthorized Facebook features".
It also referred to Facebook's terms of service, which prohibit the use of Facebook trademarks, access to users' content through "automated media", interfere with Facebook's "prescribed functions" and "facilitate or encourage others to violate them". terms ”.
At the time, the browser extension had about 13.000 downloads and about 2.500 weekly active users, according to Barclay.
Barclay, who runs another tech startup and developed Unfollow Everything as an unpaid side project, told Page Minutes that a few hours before receiving the termination letter, he noticed that Facebook had removed him from his 15-year-old account.
Facebook, citing a provision in its terms of service that is said to bind even former Facebook users, also asked not to re-develop a tool that interacts in any way with Facebook or its many other services.
These demands seemed outrageous to Barclay. Lawyers consulted by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and in the United Kingdom also found it outrageous.
And because Barclay lives in the United Kingdom, he will probably have to sue Facebook in a British court. But he would also have to pay Facebook court costs if he lost the case.
Of course because he could not risk that much money, the Unfollow Everything extension no longer exists.
