The following can be attributed to Ramya Krishnan, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

“Today, journalists and researchers who study the platforms do so under the shadow of serious legal liability, and the public suffers for it. The Platform Transparency and Accountability Act would address this problem by establishing a safe harbor for privacy-preserving research that is in the public interest. The bill would take an important step towards increasing our collective understanding of the platforms and their impact on democracy and civic life.”

Since 2018, the Knight Institute has been advocating for a “safe harbor” for public-interest research and journalism focused on social media platforms. In August of that year, the Institute sent a public letter to Facebook urging the company to amend its terms of service to permit public-interest investigations that respect user privacy. In January 2022, the Institute published a white paper proposing that Congress enact a legislative safe harbor that would protect important research and journalism that respects user privacy and the integrity of the platforms. The paper included draft language for the proposal that has been incorporated into the bill. 

Read more about the Institute’s ongoing work to lift restrictions on research and journalism on social media platforms here. 

Read today’s bill here.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org. 

Two weeks before the 2020 presidential election, Facebook sent Edelson and McCoy a cease-and-desist letter, demanding that they discontinue use of the research tool they developed, called Ad Observer, and that they take down the results of their prior research. Facebook’s threat to shut down their public interest research prompted public outcry in support of the project by researchers, journalism organizations, and civil society groups. 

Although Facebook made its demand to Edelson and McCoy in October of last year, it did not move to shut down the researchers’ Facebook accounts until earlier this week, hours after Edelson had informed the platform that she and McCoy were studying the spread of disinformation on the social media platform on January 6th. Facebook also shut down the account of a lead engineer on the project.

Today’s letter from the Acting Director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection Samuel Levine not only rebukes Facebook for publicly invoking the consent decree to justify taking action against the academic research but also expresses concern about Facebook’s lack of transparency and its failure to provide the FTC with advance notice of its intentions. The FTC’s letter is available here. 

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and First Amendment specialists at Ballard Spahr are representing Edelson and McCoy in their personal capacities in this matter. 

The following can be attributed to Laura Edelson, Ph.D. candidate in computer science at New York University Tandon School of Engineering and the lead researcher behind NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy, which operates Ad Observer, and Ad Observatory, a site for the public to explore trends in Facebook advertising:

We're very gratified for the FTC's clarification that Facebook is not required to shut down our work under their consent decree. It's time for Facebook to reinstate our accounts and allow our research to continue. We hope to put this incident behind us and return to our work fighting disinformation online.

The following can be attributed to Damon McCoy, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering:

In light of the FTC’s clarification that Facebook is not required to take enforcement action, we call on Facebook to stop obstructing and instead assist our research and that of other researchers studying the platform in the public interest.

The following can be attributed to Alex Abdo, litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

Facebook has relied from the outset on a misguided argument that the consent decree requires it to shut down even good-faith and privacy-preserving research. Now that the FTC has rejected this claim, Facebook should formally establish an exception to its terms of service for research that protects privacy and serves the public interest.

The following can be attributed to Seth Berlin, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Ballard Spahr, which is serving as co-counsel to Damon McCoy and Laura Edelson:

As the FTC’s letter confirms, Facebook has been using a supposed concern over user privacy as a pretext for shielding its political ad targeting practices from public scrutiny. It is time for Facebook to restore the researchers’ accounts and to allow this important research to proceed unimpeded. If Facebook doesn’t like what the research reveals, it should change its practices rather than trying to silence the researchers.  

Edelson and McCoy’s research relies on Ad Observer, a browser plugin they and others created that allows consenting Facebook users to voluntarily share with the researchers limited and anonymous information about the political ads shown to them by the platform. The tool enables researchers and journalists to follow trends in Facebook political advertising in their states via a public-facing site, Adobservatory.org. Reporters from Wisconsin to Utah to Florida and more have used this resource to write stories about the election and its aftermath. (See reporting about the project and using Ad Observatory data here.

McCoy and Edelson run Cybersecurity for Democracy, a research-based, nonpartisan, and independent effort to expose online threats to our social fabric and to recommend how to counter them. It is part of the Center for Cybersecurity at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. 

In 2018, the Knight Institute sent a letter to Facebook requesting that it amend its terms of service to establish a “safe harbor” for public-interest research and journalism on the platform. This safe harbor would permit researchers like Edelson and McCoy to study Facebook’s platform using basic tools of digital investigation, including Ad Observer, whose use might otherwise violate Facebook’s terms of service.  A copy of the letter is available here. 

In 2019, in the midst of ongoing negotiations between the Knight Institute and Facebook more than 200 researchers signed an open letter in support of the “safe harbor” effort. A copy of the researchers’ letter is available here.

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, communications director, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org. 

The following can be attributed to Laura Edelson, Ph.D. candidate in computer science at New York University Tandon School of Engineering and the lead researcher behind NYU Cybersecurity for Democracy, which operates Ad Observer, and Ad Observatory, a site for the public to explore trends in Facebook advertising:

Yesterday evening, Facebook suspended my Facebook account and the accounts of several people associated with Cybersecurity for Democracy, our team at NYU. This has the effect of cutting off our access to Facebook's Ad Library data, as well as Crowdtangle. Over the last several years, we’ve used this access to uncover systemic flaws in the Facebook Ad Library, to identify misinformation in political ads, including many sowing distrust in our election system, and to study Facebook’s apparent amplification of partisan misinformation. By suspending our accounts, Facebook has tried to shut down all this work. Facebook has also effectively cut off access to more than two dozen other researchers and journalists who get access to Facebook data through our project, including our work measuring vaccine misinformation with the Virality Project and many other partners who rely on our data.

The work our team does to make data about disinformation on Facebook transparent is vital to a healthy internet and a healthy democracy. Facebook is silencing us because our work often calls attention to problems on its platform. Worst of all, Facebook is using user privacy, a core belief that we have always put first in our work, as a pretext for doing this. If this episode demonstrates anything it’s that Facebook should not have veto power over who is allowed to study them.

The following can be attributed to Damon McCoy, associate professor of computer science and engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering:

It is disgraceful that Facebook is attempting to squash legitimate research that is informing the public about disinformation on their platform. With its platform awash in vaccine disinformation and partisan campaigns to manipulate the public, Facebook should be welcoming independent research, not shutting it down. Allowing Facebook to dictate who can investigate what is occurring on its platform is not in the public interest. Facebook should not be able to cynically invoke user privacy to shut down research that puts them in an unflattering light, particularly when the “users” Facebook is talking about are advertisers who have consented to making their ads public.

Edelson and McCoy’s research relies on Ad Observer, a browser plugin they and others created that allows consenting Facebook users to voluntarily share with the researchers limited and anonymous information about the political ads shown to them by the platform. The tool enables researchers and journalists to follow trends in Facebook political advertising in their states via a public-facing site, Adobservatory.org. Reporters from Wisconsin to Utah to Florida and more have used this resource to write stories about the election and its aftermath. (See reporting about the project and using Ad Observatory data here.)

Although Facebook made its demand to Edelson and McCoy in October of last year, it did not move to shut down the researchers’ Facebook accounts until yesterday, hours after Edelson had informed the platform that she and McCoy were studying the spread of disinformation about January 6 on the social media platform. 

McCoy and Edelson run Cybersecurity for Democracy, a research-based, nonpartisan, and independent effort to expose online threats to our social fabric and to recommend how to counter them. It is part of the Center for Cybersecurity at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.  

The following can be attributed to Alex Abdo, litigation director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

We can’t allow Facebook to decide what the public gets to know about Facebook. Independent research that respects user privacy is absolutely crucial right now. It’s essential to figuring out how disinformation spreads on the platform, how advertisers exploit Facebook's micro-targeting tools, and how Facebook's system of amplification may be pushing us further apart. This research should be celebrated and protected. It’s disappointing and truly disturbing that Facebook is trying to shut this kind of research down.

The following can be attributed to Seth Berlin, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Ballard Spahr, which is serving as co-counsel to Damon McCoy and Laura Edelson:

As a pretext for preventing NYU’s researchers from exposing flaws on Facebook’s platform, the company is making the truly remarkable claim that political advertising is private.  But the whole point of advertising is that it is intended to be public.  For this research, Facebook users voluntarily donate their advertising information while remaining completely anonymous, and the researchers do not collect any private user information. Facebook’s primary justification for trying to shut down this important research simply doesn’t hold up.  

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, communications director, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org.

Edelson and McCoy’s research relies on Ad Observer, a browser plug-in they and others created that allows Facebook users to voluntarily share with the researchers information about the political ads shown to them by the platform. The tool enables researchers and journalists to follow trends in Facebook political advertising in their states via a public-facing site, Ad Observatory.org. Local reporters from Wisconsin to Utah to Florida and more have used this resource to write stories about the upcoming election.

The following can be attributed to Laura Edelson, Ph.D. candidate in computer science at NYU Tandon and the lead researcher behind the NYU Ad Observatory.

“Transparency is essential, given the contention and disinformation coursing through our current election cycle. Political ad mis and disinformation is a cybersecurity vulnerability for our democracy. We developed Ad Observatory and the Ad Observer plug in to deliver an essential level of cybersecurity analysis that is otherwise unavailable to the public, and which makes clear who is trying to influence us and why.”

The following can be attributed to Professor Damon McCoy, professor of computer science and engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering

“Facebook’s algorithm allows advertisers to target individuals and groups based on information they disclose and data Facebook gathers in the background. Unfortunately, this has enabled certain Facebook advertisers to profile citizens and send them misinformation about candidates and policies that are designed to influence or even suppress their vote. Shutting down a key data source for studying election interference and manipulation—in November, of all months—impedes our efforts to safeguard the democratic process.”

The following can be attributed to Alex Abdo, Litigation Director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

“Frankly it’s shocking that Facebook is trying to suppress research into political disinformation in the lead-up to the election. There’s really no question more urgent right now than the question of how Facebook’s decisions are shaping and perhaps distorting political discourse. It would be terrible for democracy if Facebook is allowed to be the gatekeeper to journalism and research about Facebook.”

The following can be attributed to Ramya Krishnan, Staff Attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

“Independent research is crucial to understanding Facebook and the powerful influence it exerts on our democracy. Journalists and researchers who want to study Facebook shouldn’t be limited to the tools and data that Facebook deigns to make available. Those tools and data are defined by Facebook’s interests—not the public’s.”

In 2018, the Knight Institute sent a letter to Facebook requesting that it amend its terms of service to establish a “safe harbor” for public-interest research and journalism on the platform. This safe harbor would permit researchers like Edelson and McCoy to study Facebook’s platform using basic tools of digital investigation, including Ad Observer, whose use might otherwise violate Facebook’s terms of service.  A copy of the letter is available here. 

In 2019, in the midst of ongoing negotiations between the Knight Institute and Facebook more than 200 researchers signed an open letter in support of the “safe harbor” effort. A copy of the researchers’ letter is available here. 

For more information, contact: Lorraine Kenny, Communications Director, lorraine.kenny@knightcolumbia.org. 

“Facebook’s human and algorithmic decisions are shaping public discourse, influencing our elections, and affecting human rights struggles around the world. Yet the platform obstructs much of the work that could be done to understand that influence,” said Alex Abdo, the Knight Institute’s Litigation Director. “Given this remarkable show of support for a safe harbor by digital researchers, we are hopeful that Facebook will lift the restrictions to allow independent research that would shed light on the ways in which the platform is affecting humanity.”

The letter of support comes in the midst of ongoing negotiations between the Knight Institute and Facebook about the safe-harbor proposal. The Knight Institute sent a letter to the tech giant in August 2018 urging it to amend its terms of service to create “a safe harbor for certain kinds of journalism and research while appropriately protecting the privacy of Facebook’s users and the integrity of Facebook’s platform.” In its public response to this proposal, Facebook acknowledged that its terms of service “sometimes get in the way of [researchers’ and journalists’] work.” However, it contended that researchers and journalists can obtain the data they need through other channels. “This is mainly not true,” today’s letter explains.

“Given the extraordinary influence Facebook exerts over people's lives, it is crucial for independent parties, such as researchers and journalists, to be able to study all aspects of its algorithms and data practices,” said signatory Aleksandra Korolova, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at University of Southern California. “Because of the very personalized, social, and data-driven nature of Facebook's platform, truly rigorous and informative studies of many aspects of it are impossible without automated data collection, large-scale participation of individuals, or the creation of test accounts. The tools Facebook currently provides significantly limit what can be studied.”

"As researchers, we have our hands tied when it comes to accessing the data we need to independently study Facebook without violating its terms of service,” said signatory Jennifer Stromer-Galley, Professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and Past President of the Association of Internet Researchers. “By implementing a safe harbor, Facebook would be eliminating the biggest barrier preventing us from truly understanding how the social network affects our elections and our society.”

More than 200 digital researchers from around the world have signed the letter, which the Knight Institute shared with Facebook today.

See the full list of signatories and read the letter here.

In a letter sent yesterday, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University asked Facebook to amend its terms of service to establish a “safe harbor” for public-interest journalism and research focused on Facebook’s platform. The Knight Institute sent the letter on behalf of journalists and researchers who study Facebook but whose investigations are impeded because Facebook’s terms of service categorically prohibit the use of certain digital tools.

“We need to better understand how Facebook’s human and algorithmic decisions are influencing public discourse and shaping our democracy,” said Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s Executive Director. “Facebook should lift the restrictions that obstruct digital journalists and researchers from studying the forces at work on its platform.”

In its letter, the Knight Institute explains that Facebook’s terms of service impede journalism and research by prohibiting two basic tools of digital investigation: the automated collection of public information (sometimes called “scraping”) and the creation of temporary research accounts. Journalists and researchers who use these tools risk account suspensions and shutdowns, legal liability for breach of contract, as well as civil and criminal liability under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act — a statute that has been interpreted by Facebook, federal prosecutors, and some courts to apply to terms- of-service violations.

“Journalists and researchers who undertake public-interest investigations of social media platforms shouldn't have to operate under the threat of legal sanction,” said Alex Abdo, a senior staff attorney with the Institute. “Amending Facebook’s terms of service would ensure that journalists and researchers can do the work the public urgently needs them to do.”

To the extent they impede public-interest journalism and research, Facebook’s terms of service raise serious public policy concerns, the Institute says in its letter. The Institute also argues that applying the CFAA’s civil and criminal penalties to this kind of journalism and research would violate the First Amendment.

“Facebook needs to better protect user privacy, but it can and must do this without impeding public-interest investigations of its platform,” said Ramya Krishnan, a legal fellow with the Institute. “It’s important to remember that public-interest journalism and research are often crucial to alerting the public to privacy and security risks. Obstacles to this kind of journalism and research don’t serve the public interest or the interests of Facebook’s users.”

The Knight Institute's letter to Facebook.

The Institute sent the letter on behalf of journalists and researchers who study issues including filter bubbles, discrimination, propaganda and disinformation, and foreign government interference in U.S. elections, the Institute's letter says. These journalists and researchers are Kate Conger, a general assignment technology reporter for the New York Times; Cameron Hickey, an Emmy Award–winning journalist and documentarian who has produced science and technology stories for the PBS NewsHour; Kashmir Hill, a senior reporter for the Special Projects Desk at Gizmodo Media Group; Arvind Narayanan, Associate Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University; and Aviv Ovadya, former Chief Technologist at the Center for Social Media Responsibility, University of Michigan School of Information. (Institutional affiliations are provided for identification purposes only.)

Journalists and researchers calling on Facebook to lift restrictions on their work.

The Knight First Amendment Institute is a non-partisan, not-for-profit organization established by Columbia University and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to defend the freedoms of speech and press in the digital age through strategic litigation, research, and public education. Its aim is to promote a system of free expression that is open and inclusive, that broadens and elevates public discourse, and that fosters creativity, accountability, and effective self- government.  The Institute’s litigation docket currently includes a First Amendment challenge to President Trump’s practice of blocking critics on Twitter, a challenge to the Department of Justice’s refusal to disclose legal memos that constitute the binding law of the executive branch, and an effort to shed light on border agents’ practice of searching travelers’ laptops and cellphones.

Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press: Knight Institute's Facebook "safe harbor" proposal showcases need for comprehensive CFAA reform.

Freedom of the Press Foundation: Facebook’s terms of service obstruct important journalistic research.

For Abdo, pre-digital communications among individuals followed largely knowable, well-understood rules—it was a “fairly open and obvious process governed, basically, by the laws of physics: You hear what you’re next to or you hear what you choose to expose yourself to.” 

But the rules of social media platforms are fundamentally different, he told an online conference on “digital media policy for future crises,” organized by the Fletcher School’s Murrow Center for a Digital World on February 18.

“What you’re exposed to,” Abdo explained, “is not determined by the ordinary rules of physics, or by your own independent choices. It’s determined by algorithms that prioritize conversations and your feeds in ways that we don’t understand, that you can’t understand, because they’re based on machine-learning algorithms whose training data is not disclosed to the public and so can’t be [easily] studied.”

As a result, he warned, “We don’t know what effects those new rules are having on public discourse, on our society, on elections, on our media ecosystem. And we desperately need to better understand those new physics of public discourse so that we can come up with solutions, or imagine alternatives, or … reject the frame entirely.”

Watch the hour-long program—which also featured Jessica Dheere of Ranking Digital Rights and Joan Donovan of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, with moderator and Murrow Center Director Edward Schumacher-Matos.

“We’ve seen companies like Facebook use their terms of service as a cudgel against public interest research,” the Knight Institute staff attorney told a Jan. 19 online panel co-sponsored by the Institute, NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy, and Mozilla

For that reason, a legal “safe harbor” for such research is essential, said Krishnan, who noted that a just-released Institute policy paper proposes legal protections for certain research and newsgathering projects focused on platforms.

Another important means of combating problems around the platforms—which Krishnan said include dis- and misinformation, political polarization, and centralization of power—is transparency. 

“We can’t let these companies be the gatekeepers to information and research about how they work and what impact they’re having on us,” she said.“We need Congress to step in to protect the public interest by passing transparency legislation now.”

Read the Knight Institute’s policy paper, A Safe Harbor for Platform Research. And read the proposal from Edelson and others for a standard for universal digital ad transparency. 

Click the video below to view the full "Pursuing Platform Transparency in 2022" program, whose speakers include Marshall Erwin and Xavier Harding of Mozilla, Martin Rivera of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and Laura Edelson of NYU’s Cybersecurity for Democracy.

This research, disclosed to The Wall Street Journal by a whistleblower who used to work at Facebook, has revived the debate about how to regulate social media platforms. Since the revelations, we’ve seen a wide range of proposals floated, from regulating Facebook’s algorithms to subjecting the company to external oversight to reforming Section 230 and creating federal privacy laws. 

But as legislators and regulators continue to debate the merits of these thorny proposals, there’s another idea that’s already ripe for action: Congress should enable more research and journalism focused on the platforms. 

Social media platforms affect every aspect of society. They shape our public discourse; they have become the battleground of our elections; they are the source of our news and the new medium of our friendships and affiliations; and they often determine who sees an advertisement for an electoral candidate, for a job opening, or for a mortgage application. They have enabled new and meaningful forms of interaction, but they have also become powerful vectors for discrimination, misinformation, harassment, and hate.  

Some of the platforms have offered researchers and the public limited forms of insight into their operations, but these efforts have delivered far less than they promised. It’s now obvious that we need legislation to ensure that researchers and journalists can do the work they need to do.   

Despite the centrality of these platforms to our lives, we have an incomplete understanding of how they operate and what effect they’re having on our institutions and our society. Not even the platforms have a full picture, because they rely on black box algorithms that obscure their operations from even their own engineers. Some of the platforms have offered researchers and the public limited forms of insight into their operations, but these efforts have delivered far less than they promised. It’s now obvious that we need legislation to ensure that researchers and journalists can do the work they need to do. 

There are three things in particular that Congress should do. First, ​​Congress should mandate universal digital ad transparency. Digital advertising is a major avenue for harmful and illegal behavior, especially on platforms that allow advertisers to “microtarget” or tailor ads to specific users. Some platforms have begun making the ads they run more visible to the public, but many haven’t, and the ones that have haven’t gone far enough. Congress should mandate greater public transparency to enable researchers and journalists to study the online ad ecosystem. A group of computer scientists and other experts have made significant headway developing the parameters of such a mandate. Their proposal would require platforms to regularly disclose information about the ads they run, including the ads themselves, how they were targeted, how long they ran, and the number of users who saw or engaged with the ads. The proposal would also require the platforms to disclose the data in a standardized format useful for researchers, and it would fund the development and maintenance of a single public repository for this data. 

Second, Congress should create a legal safe harbor to protect independent journalism and research on the platforms. The platforms are increasingly relying on their terms of service as a cudgel against important journalism and research. Recently, for example, Facebook suspended the accounts of two NYU researchers—Laura Edelson and Damon McCoy—claiming that their research into the spread of disinformation on the platform violates the company’s terms of service. (We represent the researchers in their personal capacities.) This hostility to outside investigation has suppressed journalism and research that would help the public better understand how the platforms work and what impact they are having on society. Congress should immunize this kind of public interest research from legal threats by the platforms, so long as the research is conducted in a manner that respects user privacy. 

Third, Congress should mandate researcher access to platform-held data in carefully controlled circumstances. To effectively study some of the most pressing problems on the platforms, researchers cannot depend solely on publicly available information or even information users choose to donate. Some access to platform-held data is necessary, but access must be tightly regulated to protect user privacy. A proposal by Stanford University professor Nate Persily offers one pathway. Under that proposal, Congress would establish a data sharing regime that compels major platforms to share data with vetted researchers, and immunizes them from civil and criminal liability when they do so. 

These proposals would not, on their own, solve the problems of social media, and so it would be a mistake to let them slow debate about other regulatory measures. Transparency alone will not address discrimination, misinformation, or political polarization on the platforms. This said, better public understanding of the platforms’ pathologies might discipline their operators, and it would help light the path toward more lasting solutions, by allowing us to see the problems more clearly.

I know the answer, because I built the tool, and Facebook squashed it. This summer, Facebook sent me a cease-and-desist letter threatening legal action. It permanently disabled my Facebook and Instagram accounts. And it demanded that I agree to never again create tools that interact with Facebook or its other services.

The tool I created, a browser extension called Unfollow Everything, allowed users to delete their News Feed by unfollowing their friends, groups, and pages. The News Feed, as users of Facebook know, is that never-ending page that greets you when you log in. It’s the central hub of Facebook. It’s also a major source of revenue. As a Facebook whistleblower observed on 60 Minutes on Sunday, time spent on the platform translates to ads viewed and clicked on, which in turn translates to billions of dollars for Facebook. The News Feed is the thing that keeps people glued to the platform for hours on end, often on a daily basis; without it, time spent on the network would drop considerably.

I had the idea for Unfollow Everything a few years ago, when I realized you don’t actually need to have a News Feed. If you unfollow everything—all of your friends, groups, and pages—your News Feed ends up empty.

This isn’t the same as unfriending. If you unfollow your friends and groups, you’re still connected to them, and you can look up their profiles if you want. But by unfollowing everything, you eliminate your News Feed. This leaves you free to use Facebook without the feed, or to more actively curate it by refollowing only those friends and groups whose posts you really want to see.

I still remember the feeling of unfollowing everything for the first time. It was near-miraculous. I had lost nothing, since I could still see my favorite friends and groups by going to them directly. But I had gained a staggering amount of control. I was no longer tempted to scroll down an infinite feed of content. The time I spent on Facebook decreased dramatically. Overnight, my Facebook addiction became manageable.

When I unfollowed everything for the first time, I did it manually. I spent hours using a Facebook-provided feature to click unfollow on each of my friends, groups, and pages. I quickly realized that very few people would go to the same trouble, so I coded a simple tool that would automate the process. In July 2020, I published it to the Chrome Store, where people could download it for free.

Unfollow Everything started taking off. People loved it. Thousands of people got rid of their News Feed using it. Reviews included comments like “I am officially not addicted to Facebook thanks to you!” I received emails from people telling me that using the tool had changed their lives.