15 ms·

API and Other Platform Product Changes

167 points by krausejj 8y ago

krausejj 8y ago
word of warning to anyone who wants to integrate with facebook. although their blog posts say they are only removing select endpoints, as the comments in the link above indicate, they have basically shut off access to core endpoints well beyond what they listed. instead of errors, the endpoint returns empty data. this is extremely disappointing. our app was reviewed by FB (including source code), we have thousands of impacted users, and FB gave no indication that they would start doing this (and the issue was silent). is a walled garden better than an API that lets users share their data? should we shut down the entire graph because of a few bad actors? is this how FB treats developers?
- tmh79 8y ago
  yes, we should shut down the entire graph if it is leaking like a sieve, I don't understand why that is a question.
  - solotronics 8y ago
    It's an ethical question as well as a financial and technical one. The answer probably depends on if you make money using peoples information or not.
    - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
      And the financial question has different answers for different entities - Developers who make money creating Facebook apps, Facebook who makes money from people who send data to and spend time on Facebook and on the Facebook apps developed by those developers, and advertisers.
- losteric 8y ago
  > is a walled garden better than an API that lets users share their data? should we shut down the entire graph because of a few bad actors? What is the social cost of those bad actors? What is the social benefit of "good" actors? How many integrations were simply neutral? I'm legitimately curious about who was using the API for the benefit of society, versus engagement/advertising (which is "neutral" at best).
- Analemma_ 8y ago
  > is this how FB treats developers? Yes? Look, I hate to be "I told you so", but this shouldn't be a surprise: this is how Facebook has treated partners all along. Remember when the big thing that drove engagement on Facebook was games? Zynga was making a mint on that. Until one day Facebook's metrics showed that the constant "Help my farm!" updates were pissing people off; they flipped a switch and games disappeared, and Zynga got kneecapped. I think it still technically exists, but it's a shell of what it was. Then it was all about sharing as many news articles as possible, and Facebook built all these relationships with news publishers. That lasted until fake news and Facebook deciding people want more status updates from friends, and the publishers all got their traffic slashed with naught but a "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further." When your business lives on Facebook's platform, you exist at their whim. As soon as they decide you're no longer useful, you're cut off. You really should've had a plan for this.
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Not to mention the fact that that we've lived through all of this before with Twitter. Entire businesses were built on their API and then were obliterated in one fell swoop. Time to move on to the next thing, unfortunately.
    - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
      I'm out of the loop, what is the next walled garden everyone's playing in right now? Instagram? Snapchat? Youtube?
      - nkozyra 8y ago
        I'm hoping folks will have a "fool me twice" mentality with this. No API is permanent and no service will ever be reliable in this regard.
        AznHisoka 8y ago
        On the other hand, there's been a decent number of people who have made lots of money because they were the first to build an useful product on a platform. Examples being Buffer, Hootsuite, BuddyMedia
- tested24 8y ago
  I wonder how many people that are claiming Facebook should shut off access to their api insult Apple for their walled garden in the same breath
  - krausejj 8y ago
    yes but at least apple is consistent. when you spend time integrating with things, some level of predictability is important, no?
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  The cynical side of me says that Facebook realized awhile ago that the API was NOT helping them making any more money. If anything, it was preventing advertisers from spending more money, or using their own tools like Facebook Insights. Now that Cambridge happened, they're using this golden opportunity to shutdown the other API endpoints, so that they can keep more of the data, and advertisers will have to spend more money. If I'm being emphathetic, I'll say I'd even do the same thing if I was in Facebook's position right now.
  - nkozyra 8y ago
    > The cynical side of me says that Facebook realized awhile ago that the API was NOT helping them making any more money. This is so hard to quantify. A developer ecosystem around your product helps build engagement and lock-in. It provides free testing ground for experiments with your data (for better or worse). A lot of people look at this as a "gift" to the developer community, but the relationship is symbiotic. Now, given where Facebook is, am I surprised? Hell no. Billions of investors' dollars went away (temporarily, surely) almost overnight[1]. Their reputation took a hit. They needed to do ... something, anything. I get that. But they didn't take a smart approach, likely because of the time constraint. The smart approach is lock down the parts of the graph that have the largest vectors for privacy invasion. Instead, they just hit the STOP button and are apparently calling it a day. In fact, there are some conflicting reports on some endpoints that officially will be up for review but privately have been discussed as permanently deprecated. I expect a walled garden. We saw this with Twitter for different reasons. The lesson - as a developer/entrepreneur - should be: never make another company a mission critical component of your own. If there's a rug to be pulled out from under you, one day it will be. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/facebook-has-lost-60-billion-in-value/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/facebook-has-lost-60-billi...
    - babesh 8y ago
      The developer ecosystem served its purpose for FB. It accelerated their growth to the mass market. It is probably a net negative nowadays. They have an ad business not a platform business.
- m3kw9 8y ago
  It’s analogous to an open hose with a few bad actors, in that case yes shut the hose and create a better one
- downandout 8y ago
  You should be working on trying to take back ownership of your relationship with your users from Facebook, and remove the API from any future business plans. Implement your services off of Facebook, and email your app users telling them your services have migrated to your website or mobile app. If it wasn’t obvious already, the API is being ground into dust, and it will only further deteriorate after GDPR takes effect.
- _eht 8y ago
  Social service API's have a rich history of treating developers poorly. Anyone building and relying on social API's should be prepared for and plan for when they start flipping switches with little or no warning. That's been my experience over the last eight years, anyway.
M2Ys4U 8y ago
>You must log in to continue. Can somebody post what the actual problem is?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- sehugg 8y ago
  In case it wasn't clear, people who don't have a Facebook account can't read the post.
- vichu 8y ago
  http://archive.is/Seejz http://archive.is/Seejz
  - keketi 8y ago
    May I ask how you were able to archive the page even though it requires authentication?
    - vichu 8y ago
      I was authenticated when I archived the page.
- jashkenas 8y ago
  Seconded. For those of us without Facebook accounts, it would be lovely if someone wouldn't mind pasting (or gist'ing) the content of the OP, please. Edit: Thanks, @vichu.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nemothekid 8y ago
  FB mainly deprecated a bunch of APIs, and made other's require review. Here is the text: https://gist.github.com/nemosupremo/b90a752eb715858a9cc7c010b3d128ff https://gist.github.com/nemosupremo/b90a752eb715858a9cc7c010...
ThefinalResult 8y ago
HAHAHA! We'll see how long this lasts. Looks like Facebook is at least temporarily responding to the Senate hearing. You all should have seen this coming a mile away. I'm sure they'll try to weasel their way around it or somehow still milk users for their data.
yeeeeeeeeee 8y ago
I recommend not using Facebook to build your apps. https://developers.facebook.com/policy#thingstoknow https://developers.facebook.com/policy#thingstoknow
whataretensors 8y ago
This is why you should never cooperate with these people. Now the organization can't push back and keep apis up without feeling scared.
product50 8y ago
Damn they do. Damn they don't.
dasil003 8y ago
Time to circle the wagons and protect the core business. Collecting information and selling ads is their bread and butter. Giving third parties access to that data in order to build things gave them great marginal gains on their way to the top (sort of like Twitter), but in the current political climate the risks far outweigh whatever incremental gains they could realize going forward. Don't expect the API back any time soon.
- 2close4comfort 8y ago
  I bet Palantir still has access...
  - chinathrow 8y ago
    Why do they have access?
    - badloginagain 8y ago
      Because they'll pay for it
      - chinathrow 8y ago
        Now I'm interested. I didn't know that you can pay for access to FB data - any pointers?
        kridsdale1 8y ago
        It’s bullshit.
      - amluto 8y ago
        I don’t think Palantir is in the direct data gathering business at all.
      - Anderkent 8y ago
        This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Palantir does. It builds tools for data analysis, it doesn't gather data themselves. Anyone who has done the most basic research on the company (like watching the youtube demos) would know that. Palantir clients maybe could still have access, if they pay for it; I probably can't convince you that we don't build tools that interact with Facebook. Disclaimer: I work at Palantir.
danso 8y ago
> Facebook continues to make real-time improvements to its platform to protect people's data. We are making the following changes to maintain trust with people who use our products. "real-time* is probably not the best buzzword to use when trying to spin the rapid changes as a positive thing.
- return1 8y ago
  they should go with the classic "move fast and break things"
rawrmaan 8y ago
Holy shit, I'm not even using the Facebook API at the moment but this was infuriating to read. Please, someone make an FB alternative with wide open APIs where users can monetize their own data. If someone's already working on this, I'd love to know. I will officially never try to use any Facebook API in the future.
- demachina 8y ago
  There's Mastodon, but last time I was there it was only really big with a slightly creepy Japanese anime crowd. There just wasn't that much interesting English content to read. Mastodon's API's are mostly open source standards which means they tend to be messy and inconsistent. As far as user monetization the main strategy was predictable pleas for Patreon donations and some people constantly begging for money with a new crisis/excuse each day or various forms of victim hood. I still like Twitter because it has high signal to noise ratio news feeds and power users, once you find them. Not sure how usable its going to be once they gut their Stream API in a month though. To be honest, all social networks look like they are in various stages of epic FAIL and the perennial search for the new one that is going make it all better is probably in vain. There are a slew of inherent structural problems in social networks many of which arise out of the fact that crowds, tribes, herds tend to bring out and amplify the worst in human nature. Its recommended you read up on mimetic theory before you play: https://www.ravenfoundation.org/faqs/#dialog https://www.ravenfoundation.org/faqs/#dialog There is also a fundamental, difficult to resolve, conflict between the two forms of free speech identified in Ancient Greece, isegoria and parrhesia. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-concepts-of-freedom-of-speech/546791/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-con... Either you allow largely unconstrained free speech and your network turns in to an abusive cess pool, or you constantly police and suppress it and it turns in to China. There isn't really an easily identified middle road.
  - skinnymuch 8y ago
    I haven’t been able to find a ton on Mastodon yet but I saw enough tech posts to not think it’s just anime stuff. Others here who cheer on Mastodon have found similar results. When’s the last time you used or tried Mastodon?
dan1234 8y ago
For those who can't/won't login to see this: Facebook continues to make real-time improvements to its platform to protect people's data. We are making the following changes to maintain trust with people who use our products. These changes are never easy, but by focusing our efforts, we can put stronger protections in place to combat potential abuse. Please find a quick summary of these changes below: Facebook Login: App review required to ask users to share checkins, likes, photos, videos, events, and groups Following fields are now deprecated and will return empty data: relationship_status, religion, political, friendlists, education, work, about, website, interested_in Following Open Graph permissions are also deprecated and will return empty data: books, fitness, games, music, news, video Taggable friends and mutual friends APIs are now deprecated Pages API: App review required Page conversations will receive a new thread identifier Require a Page access token with a matching Page for specific endpoints: /agencies, /canvases, /instagram_accounts, /leadgen_forms, /page_backed_instagram_accounts, /promotable_posts, /page/userpermissions Deprecated /checkin_posts API and webhook Remove social context elements: /friends_who_like, /friends_tagged_at, /video_watch_friends, /music_listen_friends App review required to use the following edges: GET /page/events and GET /me/events Events API: App review required Deprecated content edges on all events: /feed, /posts, /comments, /pictures, /videos, /live_videos, /photos Deprecated user edges on all events: /attending, /interested, /declined, /maybe, /noreply See User Node and Page API sections for details of /events edges on these nodes Groups API: App review required; API use must meet a specific group admin need Removed some fields returned by edges on groups: to, from, likes, reactions, name_tags, message_tags, with_tags, tags, admin_creator Deprecated APIs that share data about people in groups, including /members, /admins, /owner and a number of undocumented endpoints: /member_requests, /moderators, /former_members, /insights, /links, /tagged Search API: Deprecated Search API for pages, groups, events, and users Games: Updated Instant Games context_fetchPlayers API to limit users returned to those who have played in the specified context Deprecated Scores API, Achievements API, /taggable_friends, and /invitable_friends Deprecated /{app-id}/staticresources App Insights API: Removed age, gender and country information from the app_event metric Instagram API Platform: Instagram is accelerating the previously announced deprecation of the Instagram API Platform and has lowered rate limits User Node The following User node fields will no longer return information: about, education, friendlists, interested_in, political, relationship_status, religion, website, work. GET /user/groups and GET /me/groups - This edge no longer returns any fields that contain User identifying information. This applies to all app Users, even app Admins querying their own User ID. App review required to use the following edges: GET /user/events and GET /me/events (apps with user_events permission granted will still require re-review)
minimaxir 8y ago
Some argue that the recent FB and Instagram API neuterings are in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. However, last September, Facebook silently neutered the ability for people to gather posts from public Facebook pages via the Graph API, which was damaging for FB Page research: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/1838195226492053/ https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/1838195226492053/
oh-kumudo 8y ago
Can't blame them, it is a tricky business now.
scotchio 8y ago
Kind of nice to get to step away to be honest. Here's an example of what happens if you try to request something: https://imgur.com/hOR7lbK https://imgur.com/hOR7lbK
jrochkind1 8y ago
The events API had already been pretty crippled some time ago, looks like it's been made close to entirely useless now. This is interesting to me, cause while I think their motivation was mostly about PR (although who knows, it's just kremlinological speculation), events are the main thing that keep many people I know from abandoning facebook -- it's the only way to find out about what's going on in many social circles. I contemplated trying to make something that used API to keep you in the loop on events on FB without having to actually use FB; it already wasn't really possible, now _really_ not possible. Although wait, there is still iCal feeds for at least some read-only access.... okay, back to the my own research on the matter. :)
- eertami 8y ago
  You can setup email notifications for event invites only. It was the least effort way I found to not miss out on them without using the site.
- severine 8y ago
  Yeah, this has killed etrigg.com
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
return1 8y ago
If your app depended on getting user data from facebook, you should have moved away from that anyway, they made so many pointless changes and limitations over the years that the fuss was not worth it. you can still use the feed dialogs for viral engagement.
nyxtom 8y ago
For reference, this is a temporary pause to review policies and make necessary adjustments as per this status. > Description We are pausing all new messaging experiences (including new authentications on approved apps) on the platform while we review our policies and make necessary adjustments. Learn more here: https://messenger.fb.com/newsroom/messenger-platform-changes-in-development/ https://messenger.fb.com/newsroom/messenger-platform-changes.... https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/104197713763517/ https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/10419771376351...
nopacience 8y ago
still doesnt show who visits your profile.
downandout 8y ago
Much of this data can still be obtained through scraping without the API. Depending on official APIs for data collection has never been a great idea, as they are often governed by very low rate limits etc. The Facebook API has been useless for social apps since the 2014 changes anyway, so they have made something that was already useless even more useless. Hopefully everyone here saw the writing on the wall in 2014 and isn’t relying on the Facebook API for business processes or revenue in 2018.
- nkozyra 8y ago
  > Much of this data can still be obtained through scraping without the API. Of course, but then you're violating Facebook's TOS. And then battling their preventative measures. Not a great course of action.
- sooheon 8y ago
  What happened in 2014?
  - boudin 8y ago
    They shut down what was used by the company which I forgot the name to harvest the data that was used by Cambridge Analytica. I don't have the details, but it was mainly around app having access to a lot of your friends data as soon as you would give the app access to your Facebook account, without any concent from your friends
xer0x 8y ago
Many of our apps have broken from these changes. We didn't receive any clear communication from Facebook that this would happen. The https://developers.facebook.com/status/ https://developers.facebook.com/status/ page says this has been an issue since March 21st.
lerie82 8y ago
Please login to continue.
tibbon 8y ago
I've tried to tell companies time and time again that building the core foundation of the business on an external service like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter is doomed in the end. This happened 10 years ago when Twitter locked down a lot of their API access more, and is happening again now. The CEOs and CTOs of those companies never listen, thinking "this time will be different", and yet it isn't. People in those positions don't like hearing truth that conflicts with their deeply held belief that they are different and their product/service (or mining of user data) is special and will make it through some loophole. I wish I could monetize saving companies and investors millions of dollars with this advice, but I haven't figured that out. No one likes to hear 'no'
- onion2k 8y ago
  No one likes to hear 'no' I don't think that's the whole story. "Don't build your core business around that API" ignores the opportunity that's there now. Your advice to build a business around something that can't be removed is sound if you care about the long term, which is sensible, but it ignores the short term immediate gain. You don't have to build a business that starts up and continues doing the same thing forever; for some businesses adapting to things like an API being removed is just another challenge to be met. You're clearly quite cautious and like to plan far ahead. Other people don't do that. That doesn't make them wrong.
  - zerkten 8y ago
    > That doesn't make them wrong. What if you are downstream from these changes, relying on a product that uses these APIs, and now you are negatively affected? You wouldn't be thinking that that their lack of planning or caution is a reasonable way of doing business. Perhaps your due diligence should have caught this issue ahead of time, but it's far from unreasonable for people to apply research or experience when it's available.
    - onion2k 8y ago
      What if you are downstream from these changes, relying on a product that uses these APIs, and now you are negatively affected? You resolve the problem and carry on. Every business will have challenges like that. You can't mitigate them all ahead of time, at least not without missing a bunch of opportunities right now. As a developer I find it hard to build things I know will break in the future. I find it hard to build things that might break in the future. Sometimes the opportunity in front of you makes it worthwhile regardless.
adz_6891 8y ago
A lot of the changes FB made were breaking changes that occured overnight a few weeks back that they didn't warn any developers about... That's a pretty good indication of how much they care about their developer ecosystem. I wonder if this will hurt them more than they gambited for though. They've clearly thrown a lot of resources at the messenger API to encourage third parties to make bots. It also seems like WhatsApp's strategy to monetize is increasly focused on businesses somehow integrating with the platform. As a developer, though I know WhatsApp still operates as a separate entity it's still ultimately owned by FB. And even though FB and WhatsApp still have incredibly dominant market share, stuff like this makes them look like very flaky foundations for third parties to build anything over... GDPR is going to hit FBs bottom line in europe and all their growth is coming from developing markets where user ARPUs are tiny... Long story short, I don't think times are going to be sweetness and light for FB in the near term, and so this is a time where they'll want as many friends as possible. But stunts like this won't win them any friends in developers!
ihuman 8y ago
>friendlists is deprecated Will this stop me from seeing Facebook friends that also use an application/service from within that application/service? For example, getting friend suggestions in Blizzard's or Epic Games launcher for Facebook friends.
- munk-a 8y ago
  That would be awesome. Initially friends list matchers like that were an opt-in voluntary thing, but more recently applications have been more insistent on getting FB information to gather network data. I'd love to see that sort of an offering die off, it's not like you can't post "Hey world, really into Overwatch right now, anyone want to join up?" on your feed yourself.
  - ihuman 8y ago
    > it's not like you can't post "Hey world, really into Overwatch right now, anyone want to join up?" on your feed yourself My main problem with that is method that I can't guarantee that friends that play Overwatch will see my post. The timeline algorithm is too inconsistent.
geuis 8y ago
Can anyone copy the content of the announcement into a comment so we aren't forced to login to read it?
outside1234 8y ago
So now they are just going to directly sell this information?
codersbrew 8y ago
Their documentation for their API and authentication is horrible.
nurettin 8y ago
Why can't we view the content without logging in?
- wheelerwj 8y ago
  so much this

167 points by krausejj 8y ago

word of warning to anyone who wants to integrate with facebook. although their blog posts say they are only removing select endpoints, as the comments in the link above indicate, they have basically shut off access to core endpoints well beyond what they listed. instead of errors, the endpoint returns empty data. this is extremely disappointing. our app was reviewed by FB (including source code), we have thousands of impacted users, and FB gave no indication that they would start doing this (and the issue was silent). is a walled garden better than an API that lets users share their data? should we shut down the entire graph because of a few bad actors? is this how FB treats developers?

tmh79 8y ago
yes, we should shut down the entire graph if it is leaking like a sieve, I don't understand why that is a question.
- solotronics 8y ago
  It's an ethical question as well as a financial and technical one. The answer probably depends on if you make money using peoples information or not.
  - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    And the financial question has different answers for different entities - Developers who make money creating Facebook apps, Facebook who makes money from people who send data to and spend time on Facebook and on the Facebook apps developed by those developers, and advertisers.
losteric 8y ago
> is a walled garden better than an API that lets users share their data? should we shut down the entire graph because of a few bad actors? What is the social cost of those bad actors? What is the social benefit of "good" actors? How many integrations were simply neutral? I'm legitimately curious about who was using the API for the benefit of society, versus engagement/advertising (which is "neutral" at best).
Analemma_ 8y ago
> is this how FB treats developers? Yes? Look, I hate to be "I told you so", but this shouldn't be a surprise: this is how Facebook has treated partners all along. Remember when the big thing that drove engagement on Facebook was games? Zynga was making a mint on that. Until one day Facebook's metrics showed that the constant "Help my farm!" updates were pissing people off; they flipped a switch and games disappeared, and Zynga got kneecapped. I think it still technically exists, but it's a shell of what it was. Then it was all about sharing as many news articles as possible, and Facebook built all these relationships with news publishers. That lasted until fake news and Facebook deciding people want more status updates from friends, and the publishers all got their traffic slashed with naught but a "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it further." When your business lives on Facebook's platform, you exist at their whim. As soon as they decide you're no longer useful, you're cut off. You really should've had a plan for this.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Not to mention the fact that that we've lived through all of this before with Twitter. Entire businesses were built on their API and then were obliterated in one fell swoop. Time to move on to the next thing, unfortunately.
  - LeifCarrotson 8y ago
    I'm out of the loop, what is the next walled garden everyone's playing in right now? Instagram? Snapchat? Youtube?
    - nkozyra 8y ago
      I'm hoping folks will have a "fool me twice" mentality with this. No API is permanent and no service will ever be reliable in this regard.
      - AznHisoka 8y ago
        On the other hand, there's been a decent number of people who have made lots of money because they were the first to build an useful product on a platform. Examples being Buffer, Hootsuite, BuddyMedia
tested24 8y ago
I wonder how many people that are claiming Facebook should shut off access to their api insult Apple for their walled garden in the same breath
- krausejj 8y ago
  yes but at least apple is consistent. when you spend time integrating with things, some level of predictability is important, no?
AznHisoka 8y ago
The cynical side of me says that Facebook realized awhile ago that the API was NOT helping them making any more money. If anything, it was preventing advertisers from spending more money, or using their own tools like Facebook Insights. Now that Cambridge happened, they're using this golden opportunity to shutdown the other API endpoints, so that they can keep more of the data, and advertisers will have to spend more money. If I'm being emphathetic, I'll say I'd even do the same thing if I was in Facebook's position right now.
- nkozyra 8y ago
  > The cynical side of me says that Facebook realized awhile ago that the API was NOT helping them making any more money. This is so hard to quantify. A developer ecosystem around your product helps build engagement and lock-in. It provides free testing ground for experiments with your data (for better or worse). A lot of people look at this as a "gift" to the developer community, but the relationship is symbiotic. Now, given where Facebook is, am I surprised? Hell no. Billions of investors' dollars went away (temporarily, surely) almost overnight[1]. Their reputation took a hit. They needed to do ... something, anything. I get that. But they didn't take a smart approach, likely because of the time constraint. The smart approach is lock down the parts of the graph that have the largest vectors for privacy invasion. Instead, they just hit the STOP button and are apparently calling it a day. In fact, there are some conflicting reports on some endpoints that officially will be up for review but privately have been discussed as permanently deprecated. I expect a walled garden. We saw this with Twitter for different reasons. The lesson - as a developer/entrepreneur - should be: never make another company a mission critical component of your own. If there's a rug to be pulled out from under you, one day it will be. [1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/facebook-has-lost-60-billion-in-value/ https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/facebook-has-lost-60-billi...
  - babesh 8y ago
    The developer ecosystem served its purpose for FB. It accelerated their growth to the mass market. It is probably a net negative nowadays. They have an ad business not a platform business.
m3kw9 8y ago
It’s analogous to an open hose with a few bad actors, in that case yes shut the hose and create a better one
downandout 8y ago
You should be working on trying to take back ownership of your relationship with your users from Facebook, and remove the API from any future business plans. Implement your services off of Facebook, and email your app users telling them your services have migrated to your website or mobile app. If it wasn’t obvious already, the API is being ground into dust, and it will only further deteriorate after GDPR takes effect.
_eht 8y ago
Social service API's have a rich history of treating developers poorly. Anyone building and relying on social API's should be prepared for and plan for when they start flipping switches with little or no warning. That's been my experience over the last eight years, anyway.

M2Ys4U 8y ago

>You must log in to continue. Can somebody post what the actual problem is?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
sehugg 8y ago
In case it wasn't clear, people who don't have a Facebook account can't read the post.
vichu 8y ago
http://archive.is/Seejz http://archive.is/Seejz
- keketi 8y ago
  May I ask how you were able to archive the page even though it requires authentication?
  - vichu 8y ago
    I was authenticated when I archived the page.
jashkenas 8y ago
Seconded. For those of us without Facebook accounts, it would be lovely if someone wouldn't mind pasting (or gist'ing) the content of the OP, please. Edit: Thanks, @vichu.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nemothekid 8y ago
FB mainly deprecated a bunch of APIs, and made other's require review. Here is the text: https://gist.github.com/nemosupremo/b90a752eb715858a9cc7c010b3d128ff https://gist.github.com/nemosupremo/b90a752eb715858a9cc7c010...

ThefinalResult 8y ago

HAHAHA! We'll see how long this lasts. Looks like Facebook is at least temporarily responding to the Senate hearing. You all should have seen this coming a mile away. I'm sure they'll try to weasel their way around it or somehow still milk users for their data.

yeeeeeeeeee 8y ago

I recommend not using Facebook to build your apps. https://developers.facebook.com/policy#thingstoknow https://developers.facebook.com/policy#thingstoknow

whataretensors 8y ago

This is why you should never cooperate with these people. Now the organization can't push back and keep apis up without feeling scared.

product50 8y ago

Damn they do. Damn they don't.

dasil003 8y ago

Time to circle the wagons and protect the core business. Collecting information and selling ads is their bread and butter. Giving third parties access to that data in order to build things gave them great marginal gains on their way to the top (sort of like Twitter), but in the current political climate the risks far outweigh whatever incremental gains they could realize going forward. Don't expect the API back any time soon.

2close4comfort 8y ago
I bet Palantir still has access...
- chinathrow 8y ago
  Why do they have access?
  - badloginagain 8y ago
    Because they'll pay for it
    - chinathrow 8y ago
      Now I'm interested. I didn't know that you can pay for access to FB data - any pointers?
      - kridsdale1 8y ago
        It’s bullshit.
    - amluto 8y ago
      I don’t think Palantir is in the direct data gathering business at all.
    - Anderkent 8y ago
      This is a fundamental misunderstanding of what Palantir does. It builds tools for data analysis, it doesn't gather data themselves. Anyone who has done the most basic research on the company (like watching the youtube demos) would know that. Palantir clients maybe could still have access, if they pay for it; I probably can't convince you that we don't build tools that interact with Facebook. Disclaimer: I work at Palantir.

danso 8y ago

> Facebook continues to make real-time improvements to its platform to protect people's data. We are making the following changes to maintain trust with people who use our products. "real-time* is probably not the best buzzword to use when trying to spin the rapid changes as a positive thing.

return1 8y ago
they should go with the classic "move fast and break things"

rawrmaan 8y ago

Holy shit, I'm not even using the Facebook API at the moment but this was infuriating to read. Please, someone make an FB alternative with wide open APIs where users can monetize their own data. If someone's already working on this, I'd love to know. I will officially never try to use any Facebook API in the future.

demachina 8y ago
There's Mastodon, but last time I was there it was only really big with a slightly creepy Japanese anime crowd. There just wasn't that much interesting English content to read. Mastodon's API's are mostly open source standards which means they tend to be messy and inconsistent. As far as user monetization the main strategy was predictable pleas for Patreon donations and some people constantly begging for money with a new crisis/excuse each day or various forms of victim hood. I still like Twitter because it has high signal to noise ratio news feeds and power users, once you find them. Not sure how usable its going to be once they gut their Stream API in a month though. To be honest, all social networks look like they are in various stages of epic FAIL and the perennial search for the new one that is going make it all better is probably in vain. There are a slew of inherent structural problems in social networks many of which arise out of the fact that crowds, tribes, herds tend to bring out and amplify the worst in human nature. Its recommended you read up on mimetic theory before you play: https://www.ravenfoundation.org/faqs/#dialog https://www.ravenfoundation.org/faqs/#dialog There is also a fundamental, difficult to resolve, conflict between the two forms of free speech identified in Ancient Greece, isegoria and parrhesia. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-concepts-of-freedom-of-speech/546791/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/12/two-con... Either you allow largely unconstrained free speech and your network turns in to an abusive cess pool, or you constantly police and suppress it and it turns in to China. There isn't really an easily identified middle road.
- skinnymuch 8y ago
  I haven’t been able to find a ton on Mastodon yet but I saw enough tech posts to not think it’s just anime stuff. Others here who cheer on Mastodon have found similar results. When’s the last time you used or tried Mastodon?

dan1234 8y ago

For those who can't/won't login to see this: Facebook continues to make real-time improvements to its platform to protect people's data. We are making the following changes to maintain trust with people who use our products. These changes are never easy, but by focusing our efforts, we can put stronger protections in place to combat potential abuse. Please find a quick summary of these changes below: Facebook Login: App review required to ask users to share checkins, likes, photos, videos, events, and groups Following fields are now deprecated and will return empty data: relationship_status, religion, political, friendlists, education, work, about, website, interested_in Following Open Graph permissions are also deprecated and will return empty data: books, fitness, games, music, news, video Taggable friends and mutual friends APIs are now deprecated Pages API: App review required Page conversations will receive a new thread identifier Require a Page access token with a matching Page for specific endpoints: /agencies, /canvases, /instagram_accounts, /leadgen_forms, /page_backed_instagram_accounts, /promotable_posts, /page/userpermissions Deprecated /checkin_posts API and webhook Remove social context elements: /friends_who_like, /friends_tagged_at, /video_watch_friends, /music_listen_friends App review required to use the following edges: GET /page/events and GET /me/events Events API: App review required Deprecated content edges on all events: /feed, /posts, /comments, /pictures, /videos, /live_videos, /photos Deprecated user edges on all events: /attending, /interested, /declined, /maybe, /noreply See User Node and Page API sections for details of /events edges on these nodes Groups API: App review required; API use must meet a specific group admin need Removed some fields returned by edges on groups: to, from, likes, reactions, name_tags, message_tags, with_tags, tags, admin_creator Deprecated APIs that share data about people in groups, including /members, /admins, /owner and a number of undocumented endpoints: /member_requests, /moderators, /former_members, /insights, /links, /tagged Search API: Deprecated Search API for pages, groups, events, and users Games: Updated Instant Games context_fetchPlayers API to limit users returned to those who have played in the specified context Deprecated Scores API, Achievements API, /taggable_friends, and /invitable_friends Deprecated /{app-id}/staticresources App Insights API: Removed age, gender and country information from the app_event metric Instagram API Platform: Instagram is accelerating the previously announced deprecation of the Instagram API Platform and has lowered rate limits User Node The following User node fields will no longer return information: about, education, friendlists, interested_in, political, relationship_status, religion, website, work. GET /user/groups and GET /me/groups - This edge no longer returns any fields that contain User identifying information. This applies to all app Users, even app Admins querying their own User ID. App review required to use the following edges: GET /user/events and GET /me/events (apps with user_events permission granted will still require re-review)

minimaxir 8y ago

Some argue that the recent FB and Instagram API neuterings are in response to the Cambridge Analytica scandal. However, last September, Facebook silently neutered the ability for people to gather posts from public Facebook pages via the Graph API, which was damaging for FB Page research: https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/1838195226492053/ https://developers.facebook.com/bugs/1838195226492053/

oh-kumudo 8y ago

Can't blame them, it is a tricky business now.

scotchio 8y ago

Kind of nice to get to step away to be honest. Here's an example of what happens if you try to request something: https://imgur.com/hOR7lbK https://imgur.com/hOR7lbK

jrochkind1 8y ago

The events API had already been pretty crippled some time ago, looks like it's been made close to entirely useless now. This is interesting to me, cause while I think their motivation was mostly about PR (although who knows, it's just kremlinological speculation), events are the main thing that keep many people I know from abandoning facebook -- it's the only way to find out about what's going on in many social circles. I contemplated trying to make something that used API to keep you in the loop on events on FB without having to actually use FB; it already wasn't really possible, now _really_ not possible. Although wait, there is still iCal feeds for at least some read-only access.... okay, back to the my own research on the matter. :)

eertami 8y ago
You can setup email notifications for event invites only. It was the least effort way I found to not miss out on them without using the site.
severine 8y ago
Yeah, this has killed etrigg.com

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

return1 8y ago

If your app depended on getting user data from facebook, you should have moved away from that anyway, they made so many pointless changes and limitations over the years that the fuss was not worth it. you can still use the feed dialogs for viral engagement.

nyxtom 8y ago

For reference, this is a temporary pause to review policies and make necessary adjustments as per this status. > Description We are pausing all new messaging experiences (including new authentications on approved apps) on the platform while we review our policies and make necessary adjustments. Learn more here: https://messenger.fb.com/newsroom/messenger-platform-changes-in-development/ https://messenger.fb.com/newsroom/messenger-platform-changes.... https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/104197713763517/ https://developers.facebook.com/status/issues/10419771376351...

nopacience 8y ago

still doesnt show who visits your profile.

downandout 8y ago

Much of this data can still be obtained through scraping without the API. Depending on official APIs for data collection has never been a great idea, as they are often governed by very low rate limits etc. The Facebook API has been useless for social apps since the 2014 changes anyway, so they have made something that was already useless even more useless. Hopefully everyone here saw the writing on the wall in 2014 and isn’t relying on the Facebook API for business processes or revenue in 2018.

nkozyra 8y ago
> Much of this data can still be obtained through scraping without the API. Of course, but then you're violating Facebook's TOS. And then battling their preventative measures. Not a great course of action.
sooheon 8y ago
What happened in 2014?
- boudin 8y ago
  They shut down what was used by the company which I forgot the name to harvest the data that was used by Cambridge Analytica. I don't have the details, but it was mainly around app having access to a lot of your friends data as soon as you would give the app access to your Facebook account, without any concent from your friends

xer0x 8y ago

Many of our apps have broken from these changes. We didn't receive any clear communication from Facebook that this would happen. The https://developers.facebook.com/status/ https://developers.facebook.com/status/ page says this has been an issue since March 21st.

lerie82 8y ago

Please login to continue.

tibbon 8y ago

I've tried to tell companies time and time again that building the core foundation of the business on an external service like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter is doomed in the end. This happened 10 years ago when Twitter locked down a lot of their API access more, and is happening again now. The CEOs and CTOs of those companies never listen, thinking "this time will be different", and yet it isn't. People in those positions don't like hearing truth that conflicts with their deeply held belief that they are different and their product/service (or mining of user data) is special and will make it through some loophole. I wish I could monetize saving companies and investors millions of dollars with this advice, but I haven't figured that out. No one likes to hear 'no'

onion2k 8y ago
No one likes to hear 'no' I don't think that's the whole story. "Don't build your core business around that API" ignores the opportunity that's there now. Your advice to build a business around something that can't be removed is sound if you care about the long term, which is sensible, but it ignores the short term immediate gain. You don't have to build a business that starts up and continues doing the same thing forever; for some businesses adapting to things like an API being removed is just another challenge to be met. You're clearly quite cautious and like to plan far ahead. Other people don't do that. That doesn't make them wrong.
- zerkten 8y ago
  > That doesn't make them wrong. What if you are downstream from these changes, relying on a product that uses these APIs, and now you are negatively affected? You wouldn't be thinking that that their lack of planning or caution is a reasonable way of doing business. Perhaps your due diligence should have caught this issue ahead of time, but it's far from unreasonable for people to apply research or experience when it's available.
  - onion2k 8y ago
    What if you are downstream from these changes, relying on a product that uses these APIs, and now you are negatively affected? You resolve the problem and carry on. Every business will have challenges like that. You can't mitigate them all ahead of time, at least not without missing a bunch of opportunities right now. As a developer I find it hard to build things I know will break in the future. I find it hard to build things that might break in the future. Sometimes the opportunity in front of you makes it worthwhile regardless.

adz_6891 8y ago

A lot of the changes FB made were breaking changes that occured overnight a few weeks back that they didn't warn any developers about... That's a pretty good indication of how much they care about their developer ecosystem. I wonder if this will hurt them more than they gambited for though. They've clearly thrown a lot of resources at the messenger API to encourage third parties to make bots. It also seems like WhatsApp's strategy to monetize is increasly focused on businesses somehow integrating with the platform. As a developer, though I know WhatsApp still operates as a separate entity it's still ultimately owned by FB. And even though FB and WhatsApp still have incredibly dominant market share, stuff like this makes them look like very flaky foundations for third parties to build anything over... GDPR is going to hit FBs bottom line in europe and all their growth is coming from developing markets where user ARPUs are tiny... Long story short, I don't think times are going to be sweetness and light for FB in the near term, and so this is a time where they'll want as many friends as possible. But stunts like this won't win them any friends in developers!

ihuman 8y ago

>friendlists is deprecated Will this stop me from seeing Facebook friends that also use an application/service from within that application/service? For example, getting friend suggestions in Blizzard's or Epic Games launcher for Facebook friends.

munk-a 8y ago
That would be awesome. Initially friends list matchers like that were an opt-in voluntary thing, but more recently applications have been more insistent on getting FB information to gather network data. I'd love to see that sort of an offering die off, it's not like you can't post "Hey world, really into Overwatch right now, anyone want to join up?" on your feed yourself.
- ihuman 8y ago
  > it's not like you can't post "Hey world, really into Overwatch right now, anyone want to join up?" on your feed yourself My main problem with that is method that I can't guarantee that friends that play Overwatch will see my post. The timeline algorithm is too inconsistent.

geuis 8y ago

Can anyone copy the content of the announcement into a comment so we aren't forced to login to read it?

outside1234 8y ago

So now they are just going to directly sell this information?

codersbrew 8y ago

Their documentation for their API and authentication is horrible.

nurettin 8y ago

Why can't we view the content without logging in?

wheelerwj 8y ago
so much this