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Facebook has ended the ability to automatically post Tweets to profiles or pages
- f_allwein 8y agoYes, it's not the original title, but "How to use Twitter with Facebook" does not sum up well what changed.
- nmeofthestate 8y agoThe title is somewhat contradictory: "FB ends the ability to auto-post tweets to your profile" on an article about how to auto-post tweets to your FB profile.
- Ensorceled 8y agoThe first section on the page is that this feature is going away. It was pretty self evident upon clicking the link.
- badsavage 8y agoThis was the only way I used facebook. Time to move on
- cyxxon 8y agoI didn't know that was possible, so I used to do the same thing via IFTTT, that probably still works.
- AndrewDucker 8y agoNope. All automated posting to a personal profile is now blocked.
- SpecialistEMT 8y agoIfttt to fan page should work
- AndrewDucker 8y agoTo be clear, Facebook has ended the ability to automatically post _anything_ to a personal profile. More details: https://betanews.com/2018/08/02/twitter-facebook-crossposts-stop/ https://betanews.com/2018/08/02/twitter-facebook-crossposts-...
- jpatokal 8y agoThis includes most blog integrations, eg. being able to configure Wordpress to post a plug on your personal FB when you write something in your blog.
- AndrewDucker 8y agoYup. I had DlvrIt posting my blog posts to Facebook, and now that doesn't work.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoGood! This means more open distribution methods (email) will be given priority again. I don't want Facebook, nor Twitter. Just take my email address and send me your content, or offer an RSS feed. EDIT: Anyone know if this kills Buffer and other social feed managers?
- TeMPOraL 8y agoGood - if you don't like/use Facebook. For people who like/use it (and there are many), this is a very sad day.
- toomuchtodo 8y agoWhat the walled garden giveth, it taketh away. Build on someone's platform? Depend on it exclusively? Gonna have a bad time. You would think folks would learn by now.
- ConceptJunkie 8y ago
- tomrod 8y agoOn related note, Python's mechanize and requests libraries will probably soar in popularity.
- tudorconstantin 8y agoI haven't tried to, but I think you'll need a software that can interpret js to interact with FB. Like webdriver, or headless chrome.
- reustle 8y agoI'm guessing they'll still allow automatic posting from Instagram
- ceejayoz 8y agoSure, why not? They have full visibility and control over both sides of that transaction in a way they don't with other integrations. Same reason Apple can use private APIs but no one else can.
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI exclusively use FB, so I had automated posting of tweets (from my kids schools) to FB so I could stay in the loop. Also at work we Tweeted Facebook activity. I'll have to use Twitter now instead of just using Facebook. Is the hope from Facebook that people will just not bother with Twitter? Why haven't Facebook notified us wrt business use that Tweets will no longer be pulled in?
- sfoblowsjose 8y agoNo one cares?
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 8y agoWhat? Having social iteraction owned by a private quasi-monopoly means the monopoly can screw with how you interact with the world at will? Who could have guessed that? Really, I don't understand how this is news. It's what was going to happen, everyone with half a brain has known that since facebook started being a thing, and anyone who cared could trivially avoid it. So how is it that there are still people who apparently care that this happens?
- fakeempire 8y ago> Really, I don't understand how this is news. It's what was going to happen, everyone with half a brain has known that since facebook started being a thing Just because something isn't a surprise to you, doesn't mean its not news. I know that wild fires will inevitably happen, but I'm happy that they are reported on the news. > So how is it that there are still people who apparently care that this happens? So how is it that there are still people who apparently don't realize that the 2B+ users of facebook don't know everything they know.
- wjp3 8y agoSeems that everyday brings news that justifies me leaving FB.
- waydowntogo 8y agoIt looks like MySpace v2.0
- joekrill 8y agoI'm surprised at the almost universal outrage over this. I assumed this was in response to the whole election interference campaign and related issues, i.e. preventing bots from blasting out content and predetermined times or in response to specific keywords in the news, things like that. So this seems like a step in the direction of ensuring actual humans are doing these things (or at least make it slightly more difficult for the bots). But maybe I'm wrong. I don't really use Facebook to begin with so I'm probably missing something here.
- grey-area 8y agoIt's more likely a move to try to keep people within the walled garden of facebook - people can't easily move to competitors (like blogs, other social media), if those competitors can't share to facebook too automatically to ease the transition. It also means they can more easily charge companies for posting (who are the ones most likely to want to post to several services).
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoI'm surprised at the outrage too. Your personal profile on Facebook is supposed to be a place to post your holiday photos, pictures of your kids, updates about events in your life etc, not mindless automated stuff like this. Part of the reason Instagram has surged in popularity lately is because it's generally real humans posting the content rather than endless automated shitposts (I'm not saying they don't exist, but it's certainly more difficult to implement than it is on Facebook). You'd think the posters in this thread have some kind of business interest in this functionality based on the way they're reacting.
- megaman22 8y ago> Part of the reason Instagram has surged in popularity lately is because it's generally real humans posting the content rather than endless automated shitposts (I'm not saying they don't exist, but it's certainly more difficult to implement than it is on Facebook). We are clearly not looking at the same subset of Instagram. I don't know anybody that actually uses it to post real content; it's just an endless feed of meme shitposting to laugh at.
- TheRealWatson 8y agoI may be swimming in the opposite direction, but I like to see that go. I left Twitter (well, abandoned my account) years ago, tired of the excessive noise and progressive loss of relevance to me. Seeing tweets on the FB feed always makes the author seem lazy and desperate to have a presence in every social media site, just because. I know that the change won't stop all of that but will certainly reduce it. FB isn't exactly a noiseless feed but I sort of have to put up with it given family and friends.
- ghaff 8y agoI mostly agree. I use different social media for mostly different purposes and I'm not a huge fan of indiscriminately spewing every thought and post across every connected network. I cross-post some things when I think it makes sense to do so but it's a small percentage of the total.
- Jare 8y ago> seem lazy and desperate [...] every social media Wow that's quite the overreach. I mean, if not wanting to do the same thing twice means being lazy, and wanting to reach people who are in one media but not the other means being desperate, then... I'm totally guilty! But I don't really agree with either premise.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoYup. Not only that, but this is basically missing the whole point of computing, which is for humans to not do the stuff computers are better at.
- amerkhalid 8y agoI had my blog auto post to facebook when I was using WordPress it was convenient but quickly realized it was annoying for others. Now I manually share on personal profile if I think my friends would enjoy it. Glad to see it go away. Personally, I was getting tired of others’ auto posts too.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoApparently, a (for better or worse) big part of the web just lost a significant interoperability feature. Shame. And a reminder of how life with SaaS platforms looks like. You have little ability to improve things for yourself.
- cphoover 8y agoMeh... this should make facebook way less spammy. I approve. People can still share things organically.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoMajority of spam comes from Facebook pages and groups, not individual profiles. Which, apparently, this change does not affect.
- mindcrime 8y agoAnd a reminder of how life with SaaS platforms looks like. You have little ability to improve things for yourself. Exactly. Hopefully this will nudge more people to start running smaller, more regionalized (maybe down to the level of the individual) instances of Open Source platforms, based on Open Standards, to replace the kind of functionality people have been getting from the Facebooks and Twitters and Instagrams of the world. That would be a Good Thing.
- miguelrochefort 8y agoFirst Alex Jones. The this. Way to go Facebook! /s
- rge4seesr 8y agoToo bad. My favorite part about Facebook was the false assertions that shooting victims were paid actors, and the never-ending torrent of twitter's recycled hashtag spam.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoGood riddance. Got to leave more space for marketoid spam from Facebook pages. How dare an individual automate their posting and crowd out what's important.
- nunez 8y agoMy page is about to get a whole lot quieter now lol
- chasing 8y agoPeople who follow me on Facebook are different than people who follow me on Twitter. The integration was nice because I could send messages to both platforms at once and would get responses from different people on each. I'm not going to copy-paste every tweet into Facebook, so I suspect I'll basically go silent on that platform. Which sucks. And if I'm not an active part of the Facebook community, I'll probably visit facebook.com very rarely.
- mkirklions 8y agoI switched from Facebook to Twitter/Snap/Insta. Much easier than I expected, I still check my facebook once every few weeks, but the content on FB was garbage.
- iamdave 8y agoHere here, re: content. My usage of Facebook would probably increase if there was a way to filter-on site-keywords in and out of my newsfeed instead of relying on a browser extension. As it is, I'm constantly hiding posts, snoozing or unfollowing people altogether-thinking "Fine Facebook, if you want to use algorithms based on how I use the site to customize my newsfeed, customize this". Seems the site hasn't yet picked up that I don't want everyone's oversimplified political hot takes (but I like one Nicholas Cage meme and suddenly FB reacts "Would you like ALL the Cage recommendations??" No, not really). I like checking in on my friends, and that's the extant of how useful FB is to me, but there's a real fatigue to the political fatalism front and center. So, twitter it is. So I can get my oversimplified sports hot takes. Those are at least humorous and entertaining. If a social network comes along and grants me that kind of control, I would gladly beta that.
- genericid 8y ago> I switched from Facebook to [...] Insta. Well done! That will show them.
- dkitchen 8y agoI assume IFTTT would continue to be a good solution, no?
- Vivtek 8y agoNope, this breaks their automation as well. Facebook has basically removed posting ability to personal feeds from their API entirely.
- Vivtek 8y agoSo basically this removes my ability to set up crossposting through a nicely maintainable API, without making it much more difficult for any bot organization with an IT staff on call to switch to something like Selenium for their propaganda posting?
- glitchc 8y agoSounds like circling of the wagons to me, to reduce or prevent Facebook users from leaving the domain.
- partiallypro 8y agoSo, does this not apply to Pages? Only personal profiles? If it applies to pages too, it's going to break thousands upon thousands of post automations for publications.
- djhaskin987 8y agoFor those who miss the functionality, you can use IFTTT for this: https://ifttt.com/search/query/facebook https://ifttt.com/search/query/facebook I use it to post pictures to twitter whenever I post to instagram, but there's a lot of nice facebook <-> twitter functionality too.
- grkvlt 8y agoI don't think so, ALL automated posting is blocked now ;(
- tokyodude 8y agoThank you. I wish I was considered common courtesy to not cross post. If I'm following you on more than one service then everytime I see your double or triple post you've effectively wasted my time. Heck, I wish it was more common to consider if what you're posting is really worth interrupting all of your followers.
- rvense 8y agoFacebook must be destroyed.
- bookofjoe 8y ago21st-century Carthage
- emeraldd 8y agoDoes this change impact the ability to programatically create ads? I seem to remember the Facebook API treating ads as a kind of shadow post on a page the last time I messed with it. If that is still the case, this could also force users into the Facebook UI for that functionality.
- ec109685 8y agoThis going to encourage dark patterns like asking for Facebook username and password for apps that want to support automation.