Thanks for developing your Facebook application. We've disabled your account.

Update: I don't know if it had to do with the Slashdot post today or not, but the NewsCloud application was approved and added to the Facebook application directory today (on a Sunday). Please give the application a try. In addition to providing a number of NewsCloud's social news features within Facebook, it allows you to watch video clips from The Daily Show and Colbert Report from within Facebook and share them with your Facebook friends. More newsy video sources will follow hopefully.

Original post:

After reading the enthusiastic announcements of Facebook's development platform, I spent the next week working on a Facebook Application for NewsCloud. It's not that I was swayed by the hype, just that I saw a real opportunity for my site to reach a large new audience without a big marketing expense. I was also curious about the potential of applications within Facebook's inherently viral social network. Although I'm still waiting for Facebook to approve my application and add it to their public directory, nearly 400 users have signed up for my application through word of mouth. Then on Thursday, Facebook disabled my account for allegedly "exceed[ing] [our] limits on multiple occasions, despite having been warned to slow down". It took about four hours to convince them to reactivate my account. "Please slow down the rate at which you use certain features," they said. Realizing my hard work could have been deleted overnight by a fledgling bureaucracy with a number of unpublished rules and regulations made me think more deeply about the risks of trying to build community online with other people's platforms.

While I like the Facebook service and the application platform, I think it's been over-hyped prematurely. Based on my experiences, the Facebook development platform is at best a late Alpha or early Beta system. The online documentation is poorly organized and woefully incomplete. The stability of the site is still weak. On Wednesday morning, a Facebook code update broke the service for most applications for several hours. Today, applications that used built-in tabs were broken by another change. Despite having more than $37 million in venture capital financing and more than 120 employees, few Facebook developers participate in the application developer forum and many questions are left unanswered. One of the biggest failures has been the lack of communication, transparency, unevenness and delays in the application approval process. While some applications are in the directory with thousands of users, many application developers (including me) have been waiting two weeks for approval with no explanation. Meanwhile, some developers report in the forum that they've had applications approved overnight.

So what did happen with my account? Contrary to Facebook's comments, I did not do anything clearly disallowed when they deactivated me. Facebook has an active developer forum which I've participated in a lot over the last few weeks. In addition to open sourcing my Facebook code to help other developers, I've asked questions and tried to help answer some for others. On Wednesday, when I tried to post, Facebook warned me that I was posting too much and risked having my account disabled. So, I didn't post. I waited until the next day and the warning went away. By Thursday, I wanted to share my application with my friends and colleagues. I sent a Facebook invitation to 70+ friends with a link to my application. This worked fine. Then I tried to send an invitation to a longer list of colleagues. That's when my account was disabled without warning.

Apparently, Facebook's system doesn't block you from requesting operations that it doesn't want you to complete. i.e. rather than disabling accounts without warning, Facebook could simply limit the invitation box to 99 email addresses. I have not yet been able to get an answer from Facebook Support as to whether my invitations were sent or whether it's okay to resend them. Facebook's automated system also doesn't know the difference between helpful pro-community participation in their application developer forum and forum spam. Here's what they told me:

"Facebook has precautions set up to prevent excessive usage. Excessive usage depends on a few factors including amount of posts/messages, time frame, and content. Your account was warned because you took repeated actions that could be construed as spam. For instance, it is a violation of Facebook's Terms of Use to repeatedly send the same message or to make the same post. Facebook prides itself in protecting users from spam, and we take this standard very seriously. Please do not send or post anymore form messages or send the same message in a friend request." Followed by this non-sequitur, "Sorry for the inconvenience. Further violations of our Terms may result in the termination of your account."

So in other words, Facebook wants you to develop your application in their system - just don't tell too many people about it, too quickly ... And don't post to our forums too much either. Apparently, Facebook wants the community to commune at a pace that it likes, and no faster. It seems to me that real world communities operate in all sorts of ways with all sorts of different styles of communication and that Facebook's rules risk stifling the natural ebb and flow of different kinds of communities' communication styles. e.g. if Facebook ran Italy, it would outlaw speaking with your hands. You can laugh at this but I think the lack of transparency and user autonomy here raise important issues about the maturation of privately-held, for profit, online communities.

Facebook's home page advertises itself as "a social utility that connects you with the people around you." Utility is a term often used with vital services such as electricity and gas that the government regulates. My concern with Facebook is that it's rules aren't published and it's easy to violate them without realizing it. As social networks become more vital communication tools, the idea that a provider can disable my account on a whim is kind of disturbing. The promise of Facebook's application platform is that its services will become more regularly used services that I rely on. Having my account disabled for four hours will eventually be like having my cell phone service interrupted during a busy day.

Technorati Tags: facebook, facebook applications, newscloud, social networks

The Facebook platform is very innovative. Web developers are able to pick it up pretty quickly despite the gaps in documentation. The sheer number of applications is a testament to this. It provides a form of HTML and of SQL (FBML and FQL) that can be used to build pages. It offers a flavor of AJAX for limited dynamic behaviors and the ability to place iFrames in content. It also offers a rich API for interacting with member profiles (although these don't work consistently yet). And, it provides image caching which improves performance and saves you bandwidth.

I like the ambitiousness in the platform and the capabilities that it creates within a large, viral social network. It is a platform with great potential but it is not yet ready for prime time. I would say there are three categories of major complaints I've seen from developers:

1. Delays in the application approval process. While a number of applications have been approved and placed in the public directory, many developers complain that they can get no information or updates about the status of their applications. e.g. I've been waiting two weeks for approval. It's a bit unfair because those in the directory are accessible to broad number of users, whereas unapproved applications have to rely on word of mouth. Also, those who have been rejected don't know why they've been rejected. Others seem to have been randomly approved. I think to some extent Facebook opened up some incredible possibilities without clearly thinking through the ramifications of the ways people might use the application. My guess is that they (and their lawyers) are struggling to figure out and refine the guidelines for what they will and won't allow.

2. Instability in the platform. While my application has had respectable uptime, the Facebook developers are regularly updating code. As I mentioned, today, applications with tabs started failing and had to be patched. Wednesday morning, most applications were unreachable for several hours. The first version of the PHP4 library didn't work much at all. We used to call participating in systems like this at Microsoft, "eating your own dogfood" except application developer's are having to eat Facebook's dogfood. Their stability isn't bad for an early beta platform, I just think they should have waited to announce it with so much fanfare.

3. Incomplete documentation and poor communication with the developer community. The Facebook documentation is very incomplete. The documentation for some functions is just blank. Other functions don't operate consistently or operate mysteriously. One particular sore spot is the functions that publish a user's activities to their profile and feed pages - key Facebook components. Many functions don't provide proper status or error messages. e.g. When you let users invite their friends to your application, there's no way to know whether or not they completed or cancelled the operation. Facebook employees participate irregularly in the forum, so many questions get asked over and over without a response from the company. The documentation and tools are laid out in many different areas, so it's hard to tell where to go for the latest documentation or answers e.g. the Wiki? the Developer forum? the RSS feed? the Developer page? Facebook is a wealthy company with a lot of employees - I think they have a responsibility to the developer community to put more resources into support.

Facebook's application platform is a sort of evolutionary mutation that could allow social networks to become more useful than email and calendaring applications in the near future. Still I am very concerned about the experience I had having my account disabled. I worry a bit that writing a public critique of the company may lead to my banishment or the indefinite delay of my application approval. I worry that the open source community has struggled to build distributed applications such as social networks or search for that matter, leaving us to choose from a small number of privately owned social network providers and search engines. Users are having to make bets on young companies like Facebook and Google without having much say in the way that they operate, the rules they enforce and the information they gather and collect about our activities. It's not an ideal situation for consumers.

Comments

[Paul Hart]

Thanks for posting this, I'm doing some final(?) testing of an app I intend to launch in the next week or two, and I agree with the things you've encountered. There are many, many shortcomings with the current developer platform, both in terms of documentation completeness and functional completeness.

My current bugbear: you can't prepopulate the uid of a fb:friend-selector element, so if the associated form has errors, the user loses all their friend selections.

[rrc]

When you say your account was disabled, do you mean your facebook app, or your actual Facebook account? I have a lot of stuff set up in my actual Facebook account, and may want to play around with Facebook apps - would it be prudent to set up a new account with a semi-pseudonym?

[Jeff]

It's probably prudent to developer under an account with your work identity and keep a different account for your personal identity.

My app kept operating while they disabled my account - but I couldn't administrate it.

[andrea]

they disable my account too! i didn't know the rules very well =S... one of the times they warning me it was because the system was weird and they post my message several times.... i tried to explain them but it seems that the only one that answer your messages in disabled@facebook.com is a machine.

[rottnpagan]

They disabled my boyfriend's account, after warning him that his inbox was disabled for overuse. He was messaging ME!! We waited, and then resumed. Now, two days later, his entire account is GONE.

I am NOT a happy girl. His work blocks everything BUT facebook, so that's our only way to communicate. He's currently in California, and I live in Canada. :(

[sunny]

Facebook stinks, 3 days of chatting with friends and new people it disabled my account, i had exceed the limit ! what kind of crap is this, i am going back my google and ask my friends to backup their data and stop using this non-sense, no care towards the users and their accounts just blowing them away is so stupid i doubt they can even recover with a new name, sure not even in alpha stage too many bugs and limitations, people are used to better things like MSN hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo and their chat way better and more stable its been years of good service and dependable

[Mokhtar Hably]

i have a profile on the facebook , but it had been closed , and i worked alot on my profile to make it better and better and i have a group that i worked alot on it , and then i loose what i have done that easy . HOW CAN I RETURN TO FACEBOOK TO MY PROFILE AND MY GROUP ???? SO PLEASE HELP ME .

[shannon mcelnea]

i must say wats the use of having a social network if you cant chat....
im in the uk and i was talkin to my friends in sa cos im going back there on sunday now i have no way of talkin to them except msn....
i think facebook is useless because of this..... you guys can hae your facebook page but i will tll ppl how useless it is!!!!!!
you guys shouldnt have a social network if this is how it works... i wasnt spamming i was planning my matric dance??? you guys have a hirrible service!!!!!!!!!!!
shannon

[monika forintos]

Please give me my account back I do send alot of E mails have alot of friends! I havent done anything wrong I havent been in touch with so many people for years...and now its been taken away from me...... Can you PLEASE give me my account back! Facebook shouldnt even exist if this is gonna happen to everyone!

[britlee williams]

facebook has deleted my account and one of my best friends was in a car accident and she stays more than 100 miles away from me and facebook was the only way of keeping contact with her and i dont understand why my page was disabled and im so sad now that i contact her can you please help me out?

[donna gratton]

i didnt knw u couldnt send lots of emails.. kinda hard to keep track when u reconnect with peopl who u havent seen in 20 years.. can i please have my account back...

[Candace]

I would like to know if I would be able to get my account back..

[joanne]

I have no idea what is goin on and i am afraid that all my pictures and friends and everything is going to be lost, i have read lots of the stories hear and i dont think it is very proffesional of facebook to close your account and not let u know why or how to fix or change it

[Jeremy]

One day I logged onto facebook and it said that my account had been disabled by an admin and to contact disabled@facebook.com for more info. All I did was send one birthday change request form because when I originally signed up i thought that it wouldnt matter how old u were but then i found out about networks and wanted it changed to the correct date and they send me a letter back saying that i was changing the year of my birthday too much!!! wtf... i never changed it once. Screw facebook, they treat all of they costomers accounts like crap. Half my friends accounts have also been disabled for no reason. I hope everyone leaves facebook and they go out of business

[Robinsan]

hi i need helped with my facebook account bk it has been disabled from the administar..can u plz helped with it thankz

[Loris]

hey....10 min. ago i wanned to log in on facebook n all i do is put my password n they tell me tht your facebook account has been disabled contact disabled@facebook.com for more info... what the hell??? i mean i didnt do anything...:S:S i had this network of a high school i didnt go to n i dont kno anybody there...i just put tht network bcuz mine waznt there...anywayz then i just joined the spain network n i had friends in this network so why did they disable it?? i mean i have a network and friends on it?? i dotn get it...please just bring it back...and if u dont screw you...bcuz i didnt do anything bad...

[Chris Kirkland]

I was reading your post before we started developing apps, little did I expect I'd be blogging along the same lines!

Anyway facebook decided to remove our app without warning, even after telling us our app was okay (not just directory approval but responding to an email we sent).

more here:
http://www.mrkirkland.com/attention-developers-facebook-delete-applications-without-warning/

[Keewan Kelly]

IM REALLY SORRY IT WONT HAPPEN AGAIN

[Amy Scott]

I started a group on Facebook where I had almost 20,000 members. It was against a large university in the city of Halifax - Dalhousie University. This group "
Stop Dalhousie University from murdering dogs and puppies" just got deleted by FACEBOOK. So much for freedom of speech......

[arnaud]

Hello.My account has been disabled and i don't know why.

[evan]

i dont understand, i was just signing up on to facebook and it said in red writing your account has been disabled by an administrator?

[evan winther]

im pissed of , all my friend had face bbok and i wanted to get it to so i loged in did everthing right and didn't ly about my age then i loged in and it said ur account has been disabled, by an administator,, well know i cant even go on mesager thanks to them and ive never got warned about nothin thease past months.?

[neely]

please help me..
someone has deleted my account on facebook.. how do i reactivate it?

[David Hopson]

I was deleted from facebook and I just used it to play little games and stuff. They gave me no reason as to why I was wiped. Just the same message that I see they send to everyone when their account has been disabled.

Apparently, they have no concern over individuals. They don't care how much time you have put into your account. One minute you are on and next minute you are deleted with no specific explanation.

If you do a google search saying diabled and facebook, you will see that are tons of people that have been deleted the same way.

Too bad that internet laws are cloudy, because people would be sueing these guys left and right.

Me? I am going to let everyone I can to avoid facebook as it seems to get some sort of pervese pleasure from delteing people and gloating over it.

dh

[w.welder]

I wanted my account to be opened again please..