12 ms·
Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook
- jarin 16y agoWell that was quick. Who's gonna notify the notifier?
- gaiusparx 16y agoYou need a Facebook App Breakup Notifier app.
- il 16y agoAnd has reached 3.6 million users overnight. That's incredible! I bet the developer is kicking himself for not monetizing with ads right away, that's a lot of traffic and a lot of money.
- kmfrk 16y agoAs someone with little experience with monetization, which ad networks do you usually use on a site with - at the time - no traction? Yoggrt, Fusion Ads and Deck Network come to mind, but you can't use nor apply for them, so what does that leave you?
- qeorge 16y agoAdSense or affiliate ads (i.e., Match.com). No one said it was pretty.
- il 16y agoSites like The Deck aren't really ad networks, they're more like vanity projects for hipster web designers. AdSense would not work well either with no text content. However CPM banners like Doubleclick combined with affiliate links to dating sites could do very well indeed.
- kmfrk 16y agoDo you have any article or vendour links I could take a look at? I've struggled to find good banner ads.
- rudiger 16y agoThat's 3.6 million Facebook users in the Breakup Notifier database, not 3.6 million users of Breakup Notifier. Since the app pulls in all your Facebook friends, and people generally have a few hundred friends, I suspect the number of users of Breakup Notifier is in the tens of thousands.
- jonknee 16y agoThough people don't usually have unique friend sets--if a group of 10 people all know eachother and are friends on Facebook that's just 10 users.
- sahillavingia 16y agoIt's a lot higher than 10,000 [1]. [1] - Dan told me. EDIT: (the parent comment once said 10,000, now changed.)
- teej 16y agoAs appealing as 3.6M users sounds, "reach" apps like this often make really bad money. He would've made no more than $500 if he was doing well. He was capturing emails, so that had long term potential, but he wouldn't have become rich from three days of FB user impressions.
- noahth 16y agoit was only a weekend project, only running for a few days before takedown - under those circumstances I'd call $500 a solid outcome, especially when the alternative is $0.
- theli0nheart 16y agoYep, I'm kicking myself. And to think I was just about to implement Facebook Credits. Fool me once...
- raganwald 16y agoMeta-question: Will this termination inspire the same anti-"proprietary walled garden" rhetoric as Apple's imposition of new terms for subscription sales? If not, why not?
- stanleydrew 16y agoIf not, I suspect it's that most people already understand that a hosted service, like Facebook, is inherently a walled garden, and hence it's not surprising when something like this happens. Apple's control over what you can and can't do with hardware and software that you own is a little more alarming perhaps?
- Judson 16y agoSorry, I meant to upvote. Fat iPhone thumb.
- mkr-hn 16y agoI think this phenomenon needs a word. How about iThumb?
- alexophile 16y ago"Fat-fingering" has been the phrase for a while, but I think there's a consensus that it sounds rather... unappealing.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 16y agoSo jailbreak your phone. Then, re-evaluate 'ragenwalds question substituting "iOS App Store" for "iPhone".
- 16y ago
- kevt 16y agoAnyone know what can get an app shutdown by facebook? Apparently, Dan received this from fb: "For example, if an application is making an inordinate number of stream.publish calls and receiving a large number of user reports". What exactly is an inordinate number of post? Was Breakup Notifier spamming signed up users' post stream to get the word out? Or was it just an extraordinary number of api calls that FB was not use to getting?
- kmfrk 16y agoI'm sure Facebook will refer to some perfectly vague rules. My guess is that its transgression was to highlight how creepy Facebook is or can be.
- albox 16y agoIsn't it creepy with the 'See Friendship' feature already? I wouldn't be surprised if facebook came up with a similar 'Breakup Notifier' feature soon..
- rexf 16y ago> "We’re willing to comply with whatever they want us to (within reason)." This app wasn't taken down because of "an inordinate number of stream.publish calls." The question is how this app falls within acceptable behavior. Is it closer in nature to the acceptable practices (such as the FB Newsfeed where you see friends' recently changed statuses)? Or is it closer to behavior that FB wants to dissuade (such as an app showing how many times a given friend has viewed your profile)?
- fossuser 16y agoMy opinion is that this app does not violate the behavior that FB wants to dissuade. It sends an email that provides information that is already being provided by the user, it does not track or determine information that is otherwise not available.
- blake8086 16y agoFacebook does not want to provide that information. Twitter is similar in that they ask you to not publish deleted tweets.
- fossuser 16y agoIt's not the absence of a status, it's a new one being posted. When somebody switches from 'in a relationship' to 'single' it shows up on everyone's feed. They do want people to know that information.
- rhizome 16y agoIs the info being provided by the user, or is the app detecting info that is no longer being provided by the user, i.e. lack of friend status is not the same as a notification that you are no longer friends. If the deal is with regard to the former, I can easily imagine that FB doesn't tell you these things intentionally. If they leave it as a silent disconnect, they can construct their TOU to prohibit detecting connection state since FB does not actually provide that data. I guess in other words, FB may simply prohibit extracting any information from their service that they do not explicitly provide.
- jdp23 16y agoAnd they disabled his personal account too. Not the best way to get yourself to be seen as a good platform for developers.
- theoj 16y agoDisabling his account is either a display of creepy dictatorial power or an indication of incompetence and lack of common sense.
- jdp23 16y agoAll of the above. Activists have been dealing with these kinds of issues for a long time. Facebook's processes are haphazard, they make arbitrary decisions without notifying people, their automated filters are prone to misjudgment, and they usually don't react until an issue starts to get significant attention.
- tptacek 16y agoOr, the system that shut him down is automated and triggers 99.9% of the time on spam accounts, and the lockout is a totally sensible default.
- theoj 16y agoThen perhaps these kinds of decisions should not be taken by machines.
- ggordan 16y ago"Facebook has also, inexplicably, disabled his personal account." Sure they can try and justify blocking the application by saying it made 'excessive API calls', but how do they justify disabling his personal account?
- fossuser 16y agoMy guess is that the system that does this is completely automated. The number of API calls his app was making set off a flag for spam/spammer and his account was disabled accordingly. Until he contacted them I wonder if any human was even aware that his app had been blocked. The interesting question here is how Facebook will respond in this instance.
- ggordan 16y agoI'm curious how they'll respond too. This just gives me the impression that Facebook doesn't approve of successful (indie) applications built on their API.
- hummerpj 16y agoFor this reason I think its fairly obvious that his personal account and the app were pulled for something more than excessive API calls.
- SoftwareMaven 16y agoI think a more reasonable interpretation is the app was pulled for being spammy and the developer of the app was pulled for being a spammer. I think the implication that there is something sinister in this is reaching.
- theli0nheart 16y agoBreakup Notifier only sent out email notifications for relationship changes for those who explicitly asked for them. You could easily disable it by either personally blocking the app on Facebook, or unselecting those friends.
- 9ec4c12949a4f3 16y agoYou don't get to 3.6 million stalkers without creeping out a few people.
- acangiano 16y agoOriginal discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2243650 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2243650
- soulclap 16y agoBreakup Notifier's relationship status: It's complicated.
- rorrr 16y agoHere's a warning to you. Don't develop for Facebook. They essentially are a tyranny, you can't really take them to court for blocking you.
- brown 16y agoIn my more idealistic days, I would have agreed with you. However, if you want to be a pragmatic entrepreneur, you shouldn't lock yourself out of a huge audience like that. It's the equivalent of saying "don't build apps for Windows, they essentially are a tyranny". Well, yes, Microsoft can be a bit tyrannical; however, that's the platform where the money is/was.
- rorrr 16y agoMicrosoft doesn't ban apps. They don't even have an easy way of doing so.
- davidk0101 16y agoThis started to interfere with facebook's own stalking experience so they shut it down. Don't need to be a genius to figure out that out.
- itsnotvalid 16y agoThe moment we lean on closed platform, we would have gotten to the point where the platform owner could define and bend the rules however they want. That is why we have democracy in the first place.
- theli0nheart 16y agoIt's been a crazy 36 hours since I last posted here about my weekend project. This morning, I woke up to an email from Facebook Platform, saying that the application has gotten disabled. Full text of the email is at http://lts.cr/PRh http://lts.cr/PRh I'm not using stream.publish, and I'm checking for updates as little as possible. Also, it seems it was deleted from my apps...so they didn't just disable it. It's gone for good. I may open source the code, if anyone wants to run copies. Let me know. Update 1: I just messaged Zuck, hopefully he can respond with some more details. Update 2: I tried to appeal the decision using Facebook's little form (http://www.facebook.com/help?faq=17553 http://www.facebook.com/help?faq=17553), but it wouldn't go through for my account. My friend tried it, and it worked. Don't really know what to think about that... Update 3: Maybe this is a Harvard v Yale thing?
- pinksoda 16y agoDid you even use stream.publish? I bet you didn't get reported either. I'm removing FB Connect from all my sites. They handled this terribly.
- jdp23 16y agoSo they didn't even give you any notice, just "boom you're gone"? Disappointing. Some of the suggestions in "How to respond when Facebook censors your political speech" might be helpful -- http://www.talesfromthe.net/blog/?p=28 http://www.talesfromthe.net/blog/?p=28
- theli0nheart 16y agoNope, zero notice. It was basically "Poof!" and then the app wouldn't work. Doubly annoying since I was sleeping when it was deactivated (4am PST).
- soulclap 16y ago"Zero notice" seems to be a common thing at Facebook. Same happened with my personal account, just gone one day. To be fair, I guess it was because I didn't have my real name on it but it was the name my blog readers know me by. Several thousands of friends - gone, without a warning.
- DanielBMarkham 16y agoThis introduces a new way to get kicked out of a walled garden: become too successful. I hate to be cynical, but of course it's always been that way. The only way to get punished in a walled garden scenario is to embarrass the garden owner or bring too much attention to yourself.
- jdp23 16y agoWell, let's see if FB really meant to kick the app out. If it's just a matter of unintended behavior from automated filters, it's more an example of "the way to get kicked off of Facebook is to deviate from the norms they expect." As Zuckerberg says, the system looks for 'outlying' behavior. "If you behave like an average user you should never trigger the algorithms that will get you kicked off." http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=336 http://www.talesfromthe.net/jon/?p=336 "
- qq66 16y agoMaybe he should try to be an average 26-year-old instead of such an "outlier."
- zaidf 16y agoThis introduces a new way to get kicked out of a walled garden: become too successful. New way? Being too successful is probably one of the most common causes for being kicked out of walled gardens, usually under the pretext of "policy violation". Nothing new about it.
- shrikant 16y agohttp://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2243708 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2243708 I wonder if he's feeling honoured yet? :-)
- edw519 16y agoIn the brick and mortar world, it's extremely difficult to secure financing, investment, or even revenue if you're more than 50% dependent on an outside entity for your survival. Yet in the digital world, 100% dependency on another entity is becoming more and more common. Sounds like a high wire act without a net. Best to find other distribution outlets before you lose your balance.
- tastybites 16y agoOn credit applications our business bank specifically asks if more than 25% of your revenue came from one source in the past calendar year. If you think about it, a typical brick and mortar gets its money from hundreds if not thousands of customers every year (restaurant/cafe, auto mechanic, etc).
- byrneseyeview 16y agoRight, but these companies have lots of customers. They just get them from one place. It's like renting a particular location: it's technically true that you could lose your lease, but that's only a risk to your business's long-term viability if your lease is artificially cheap (otherwise, you'll just move to another place on similar terms). And if your location is a particularly good deal, you should take it, even though losing it would suck. Online, the same dynamic applies, but with lower transaction costs.
- tastybites 16y agolots of customers A customer is not necessarily someone who uses your product or service. That's a user. Think of a venn diagram....
- lallysingh 16y agoYour restaurant/cafe may have lots of customers, but they may be coming to you b/c you're across the street from the movies or a mall. If a primary store in the mall closes (or as in my hometown, a stabbing in the mall scares away customers), your business is pretty dead.
- vchien 16y agoCould I get a copy..:P
- Tycho 16y agoThey're probably mad they didn't think of it first.
- makeee 16y agoDid you post to a users facebook stream without asking them explicitly if they wanted to share breakup notifier on facebook? What exactly resulted in the stream.publish calls?
- ot 16y agoMaybe the TOS prohibit this usage of the API? For example the "unfriend notifier" applications are forbidden and Facebook strictly enforces this rule (I remember at least a couple of iPhone applications that got shut down). Even in this case, they should have given some explanation.
- Peaker 16y agoWe will miss the open web.
- initself 16y agoMy dreams were crushed exactly like this with MySpace. That's why I don't touch the stuff anymore.
- jacques_chester 16y agoSometimes, when facing an sudden, arbitrary decision with no appeals process, high ceremony seems like a good thing.
- 100k 16y agoDoes anyone else remember singlestat.us? They did the same thing (on MySpace) back in 2006. They were shut down almost immediately. http://techcrunch.com/2006/06/15/myspace-nukes-singlestatus/ http://techcrunch.com/2006/06/15/myspace-nukes-singlestatus/
- motters 16y agoYou can always be kicked out of a walled garden.
- douglasp 16y agoI work on the Platform team at Facebook and wanted to respond to some of the comments on this post. Breakup Notifier is an interesting idea and an example of the sort of engagement that developers can get on Facebook Platform (according to our stats this app had ~13k monthly Facebook users). That said, we've built a number of automated systems that track people’s response to News Feed stories generated by apps to ensure they have a positive experience and to determine if a given app is violating our policies. These systems have worked well, cutting spam by 95% last year alone. In this particular case, Breakup Notifier triggered one of our automated systems due to an excessive number of negative user reports. The system automatically shuts down access to the app while immediately notifying the developer via email; which is exactly what happened for Breakup Notifier. We take this action to preserve the user experience while giving our developer relations team time to work with the developer to correct the issue. We have been in contact with the developer since he followed back up with us. We hope to get the underlying issues resolved and get Breakup Notifier running again. We want Facebook to be a great place for both people and developers — and we work very hard to ensure that we are balancing all the factors at play. We think our systems do a reasonable job helping us strike this balance, but we are open to feedback and constantly look to tune how we react to these situations. Comments, flames, etc. welcomed.
- chopsueyar 16y agoWhy was the developer's personal account disabled? How is the developer supposed to contact Facebook via a disabled user account?
- douglasp 16y agoThe account was not disabled. I am not going to go into specific details of what our system does, but we require that the developer verify their identity when we take a policy action on an app. We do this to ensure that the account wasn't compromised (which could have led to the behavior our system detected). If you have ever forgotten your Facebook password, it is a similar flow. We communicate with the developer over their alternative email in these cases.
- paulnelligan 16y agoI'm pretty sure that Zuck is trying to 'own' the internet. Big pity since Tim Berners Lee originally gave it away for free.