As proof that no good deed goes unpunished, developer Louis Barclay of the very interesting Nudge Browswer Extension that attempts to keep you on track with your personal goals and avoid online wastes of time got his Facebook and Instagram accounts banned and a nasty cease and desist letter for his browser extension called Unfollow Everything. This extension worked by unfollowing all brands, pages, and people on Facebook and essentially cleaning up the News Feed. You could still interact with Facebook by visiting different pages manually, but this would have resulted in a substantial timesaver for most people as the constant attention-getting behavior on Facebook would have been squashed. As the News Feed is Facebook's bread and butter (they make a lot of money through this) this kind of extension probably represents some noticeable financial loss for them if it continues gaining in popularity so they went on the offensive with a massive legal action.
Facebook is arguably so psychologically addicting because of this News Feed constantly showing you activity that you don't necessarily need to know. The University of Neuchatel in Switzerland was even interested in studying this tool to see how it affected Facebook usage and user's psychological happiness.
Many Internet Lawyers are arguing that Facebook's actions here cross the boundary into illegal, uncompetive, and very mean-spirited behavior. Whatever value you gain from using Facebook on both a personal, social, and professional level, please keep in mind that your privacy settings should be carefully and frequently checked online to ensure that the negative consequences of using Facebook are always kept to a minimum in light of social media data leaks and other significant problems. And keep in mind that sometimes taking a break from social media can be healthy for your stress levels.
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