Meta Beats Immunity Suit From Maker of Facebook ‘Unfollow’ Tool

The internet scholar who is developing a browser extension that would effectively turn off Facebook users’ newsfeeds lost his bid to have legal immunity from a future lawsuit by Meta Platforms Inc. if he releases it.

Because Ethan Zuckerman hasn’t built his “Unfollow Everything 2.0" browser extension, his “alleged injury is too contingent upon uncertain events to satisfy the constitutional ripeness requirement,” Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley of the US District Court for the Northern District of California wrote in a Nov. 22 order dismissing the case without prejudice.

Zuckerman, a communications professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, designed a ...