Facebook on Tuesday announced[1] it's limiting the way developers can use APIs on its platform, continuing its efforts to improve user privacy and security.
The changes come amid ongoing questions about the misuse of consumer data culled from Facebook. The rollback of developer permissions also comes one week before Facebook's annual F8 developer conference.
The platform updates announced Tuesday span several Facebook products. Notably, under Facebook LogIn, the publish_actions permission will be deprecated. This means apps will no longer be able to publish posts to Facebook as the logged in user. Any apps created before Tuesday that had permission to do so have until August 1 before their access to this permission is shut down. In place of this, developers are encouraged to use Facebook's Share dialogs for web[2], iOS[3] and Android[4].
Additionally, starting August 1, only approved apps can use the Facebook Live API publish_actions permission to publish on bhealf of users. There are a handful of changes to the Pages API; for instance, organic targeting based on gender and language will be deprecated immediately for posts created through third-party apps. And on the Messenger Platform, developers will be discouraged from attaching their app's name or logo to images, videos, GIFs or sound clips that peopel share in conversations.
About three weeks ago, Facebook announced several other API limitations[5] and a new app review process.
Acknowledging that the changes may inconvenience the way some businesses operate, Facebook on Tuesday pointed developers to a form[6] to fill out with any urgent issues.