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 browser extension that would allow Facebook users to automatically unfollow all friends, groups, and pages. The tool would enable users to affirmatively choose which friends or pages they wanted to see content from on their feeds. Unfollow Everything 2.0 would also share user data for academic research on the impact of social media on users’ well-being.

Zuckerman preemptively sued Meta in May. He requested a ruling granting him immunity under Section 230 of the Communications Decent Act, which shields online platforms from being held liable for the content on their sites, from potential Meta claims relating to the extension for breach of contract or violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act or the Computer Data Access and Fraud Act. He alternatively asked the court to declare that his browser extension doesn’t violate Meta’s terms of service or the antihacking laws.

Zuckerman argued Meta’s “history of litigation against third parties who have created browser extensions suggests a reasonable apprehension of suit,” the order said.

But Zuckerman’s request for relief “remains too speculative,” since he hasn’t built the browser extension yet, the court said. “Although he ‘anticipates’ the coding could be completed within six weeks by his ‘team of engineers,’ his anticipation demonstrates the uncertainty in how the tool will ultimately be coded, by what technical means it will interact with Facebook, and how long the venture will take,” Corley wrote.

The patent infringement cases Zuckerman cited also don’t support his request for declaratory judgment, since he “has not alleged a theory of liability that prevents him from even coding” the browser extension, the judge said.

Even if the court had subject-matter jurisdiction, Corley said it would still be premature to issue a ruling. If Zuckerman prevailed, “the Court would have to cabin a declaratory relief order based on contingent facts—such as, whether Unfollow Everything 2.0 would be built to x specification or function in y capacity, or whether z provision of the Meta Terms of Service would be implicated. Such guesswork runs counter to the benefit of finality offered by the judiciary.”

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and Qureshi Law represent Zuckerman. Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP represents Meta.

The case is Zuckerman v. Meta Platforms, Inc., N.D. Cal., No. 3:24-cv-02596, 11/22/24.