On Tuesday, Sept. 24, the University of Massachusetts Public Interest Technology (PIT) club hosted Ethan Zuckerman, an associate professor of public policy, information and communication at UMass Amherst, to speak about his ongoing lawsuit against technology giant Meta.

“I actually like Facebook,” prefaced Zuckerman, adding that the platform is the primary mode of media he uses to keep up with content and people that he cares about.

His grievance is with how Facebook presents the content to him. “Sometimes [Facebook] will give me a random person that I haven’t thought about in many many years and they’ll get obsessed with that person for a while, and I’ll get all their posts.”

Although Facebook is entitled to the business interest of presenting content that brings in revenue for their company, he asserted that, “We [as users] should also have the right to experience the internet in different ways.”

This absence of freedom over how users view social media was the impetus behind Zuckerman’s lawsuit, which stemmed from a piece of software invented by his friend and fellow technologist, Louis Barclay.

As Zuckerman recounted, in 2020, Barclay invented a third-party extension christened “Unfollow Everything,” which allowed Facebook users to expedite the process of unfollowing their friends on the platform, rather than arduously carrying out the process by hand.

In response to Barclay’s publication of the tool, Meta deleted his associated accounts and banned him for life from the platform. It followed up by threatening legal action for “his intentional and unauthorized access to its protected computer networks,” according to a letter of cease and desist from a law firm representing the company.

Although it was too risky for Barclay to pursue a successful lawsuit against the tech giant, Zuckerman hypothesized, “What if someone were dumb enough to agree to build a new version of Unfollow Everything and ask a federal court in the United States, ‘Would it be okay to build this?’”

This strategy, known as “seeking a declaratory judgment,” was the method that Zuckerman employed in his lawsuit against Meta. Although he has not yet introduced the new version of Barclay’s web extension due to the likely chance of facing similar legal challenges, Zuckerman approached a group of lawyers at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute to file the motion on the basis of a 1996 statute called the Communications and Decency Act (CDA).

Section 230 of the CDA, which Zuckerman and his lawyers at the Knight Institute are utilizing in their suit, is commonly referred to as “the 26 words that created the internet.”

Although the more referenced part of the legislation was written to protect online platforms from civil liability for third-party content, Zuckerman stated, “What people do not realize is that these 26 words are not all that is in CDA 230.”

His team identified an obscure, rarely litigated part of the “decently big chunk of law” that would support their case.

“It is the policy of the United States to encourage the development of technologies which maximize user control over what information is received by individuals, families and schools who use the Internet and other interactive computer services,” read Zuckerman, referencing the latent clause that was the backbone of his lawsuit.

“We should find out by the end of the year whether the federal court will hear the case,” said Zuckerman, continuing to say then, that they will have to “go up against some very well-paid, very smart attorneys working for Facebook and we hope the court will decide in our favor.”

Zuckerman concluded his talk by stating his goal for the future of social media which he hoped to bring to fruition through his lawsuit. “I think this is going to help us get towards the vision of social media where it’s not controlled by a small number of very powerful companies,” he said.

He echoed this sentiment in an opinion piece he wrote for the New York Times: “A healthy internet is a balance between the intentions of the powerful companies that run it and the individuals who use it.”

He came up with the idea of the lawsuit while “putting together slides for class,” recounting his “lightbulb moment.”

After the talk, Dhriti Reddy, a member of the Public Interest Technology club said, “More control over social media would be better to really understand news and information we’re getting.”

Addie Padhi can be reached at [email protected].