There was a way to use Facebook less but it was canceled

“Today I was deleted from Facebook. The decision is not reversible“. The developer Louis Barclay wrote it, on Twitter, last July 1.” No explanation, it is the first time this happens, all of this is terribly dystopian“Barclay added in the same tweet.

A few hours later, through an email sent by the social network’s lawyers, Barclay realized what his fault was: having invented a small program, to be precise an extension of Google Chrome, which automatically deleted the news feed of Facebook users. Friends, groups, pages to which they were subscribed: everything disappeared, the result was a completely blank timeline.

The program was called Unfollow Everything and at the time it could count on a modest number of users: 10,000 had downloaded it but the weekly active users were just 2,500. A small number that must have worried Facebook anyway, which sent a letter of formal notice to its inventor.

“Facebook has gathered evidence about its Chrome extension that facilitates unauthorized functions on Facebook“reads the first lines of the letter sent to Barclay, which explains how” Unfollow Everything “would encourage others to break the rules of the social network. The letter finally informed and confirmed to Barclay his cancellation from Facebook and Instagram.

With perfect timing – a few days after the serious blackout of the social network and the accusations of whistleblower Frances Haugen – Louis Barclay has made this story known only now, therefore a few months after it happened, telling it with an article on Slate.

In his piece Barclay tries to explain how his extension actually not aiming to destroy Facebook, but to make it a better and healthier place. “I still remember the feeling I got when I used Unfollow Everything for the first time – wrote the developer – It was almost miraculous. I had nothing left but I could still see the list of my friends and the groups I was subscribed to, and contact them or look at their page directly. Time spent on Facebook had dropped considerably. Within one night, my addiction to the social network had become manageable“.