1. When you embed an iframe with fb:iframe, the parameters Facebook passes to your app get passed to the iframe automatically. This includes the Facebook UID. This is the way everyone has always embedded Facebook ad units and AFAIK nobody has ever been punished for doing so. I've had people at Facebook look over my apps with a fine tooth comb when dealing with TOS violations and this has never once come up.
2. Facebook will take action against apps if people use fb-provided widgets in ways that "violate" the TOS, i.e., if Facebook's own widgets violate the TOS they will take action against the app.
This happened to be with the fb:wall widget, where Facebook told me I wasn't allowed to have comments auto-post to people's walls (the default behavior) and must include a "report" link to every comment (impossible / not a feature of fb:wall). They disabled feed posting for one of my apps due to that "violation."
3. Facebook, as an organization, hates, hates, hates bad press. They will move mountains to prevent or preempt bad press. I've had people at Facebook tell me more-or-less verbatim that whatever I did, my applications were not allowed to generate bad press for Facebook. If they did, I would be banned.
4. Facebook will scapegoat companies. When the Scamville drama happened, Facebook banned Gambit payments from the platform and threatened any application developer with banning if they used Gambit. They were no worse than Offerpal or Super Rewards with respect to the types of offers they were running -- everyone was getting their offers from the same pool -- but Facebook banned Gambit and implicitly endorsed Offerpal and Super Rewards.
Gambit was the smallest of the three, so the general feeling in the FB developer community is that they picked the weakest one and took them out to show how "serious" they were in dealing with the problem. They also made SR and Offerpal clean up their offers and punished Zynga for running questionable offers, but only Gambit was permanently and forever banned.
So, given the above, I have to wonder...did Facebook ban lolapps, the smallest of the major FB game companies, from the platform as a way to preempt the press fallout from this article?
I really like your comment, and appreciate that someone with real world experience is giving an inside look into dealing with Facebook.
I doubt any viable organization would act any differently about bad press. Are you trying to say in your third point that Facebook takes it to an extreme beyond other companies you've worked with? Could you expand on your thought?
Why was Gambit the weakest of the three payment companies? From your perspective, is it possible that the FB dev scuttlebutt was conspiracy theory, or are you reasonably sure they used Gambit as their sacrificial lamb?
1. No, I'm just saying Facebook reacts very strongly to bad press. Maybe more or less strongly than other companies, but they don't typically take swift action on the platform (e.g., putting a 50-person company out of business overnight) unless there's a bad press story lurking somewhere.
That's their MO.
2. I know some of the parties involved, and Gambit wasn't doing anything differently than the other offer providers in this regard.
Even if they were being more aggressive, say, why not ban them until they cleaned up their act vs. banning them forever?
And why ban any developer who decided to use them, even if they were only serving up compliant ads?
Facebook was going so far as to send out C&Ds to developers using Gambit at one point.
A few facts:
1. When you embed an iframe with fb:iframe, the parameters Facebook passes to your app get passed to the iframe automatically. This includes the Facebook UID. This is the way everyone has always embedded Facebook ad units and AFAIK nobody has ever been punished for doing so. I've had people at Facebook look over my apps with a fine tooth comb when dealing with TOS violations and this has never once come up.
2. Facebook will take action against apps if people use fb-provided widgets in ways that "violate" the TOS, i.e., if Facebook's own widgets violate the TOS they will take action against the app.
This happened to be with the fb:wall widget, where Facebook told me I wasn't allowed to have comments auto-post to people's walls (the default behavior) and must include a "report" link to every comment (impossible / not a feature of fb:wall). They disabled feed posting for one of my apps due to that "violation."
3. Facebook, as an organization, hates, hates, hates bad press. They will move mountains to prevent or preempt bad press. I've had people at Facebook tell me more-or-less verbatim that whatever I did, my applications were not allowed to generate bad press for Facebook. If they did, I would be banned.
4. Facebook will scapegoat companies. When the Scamville drama happened, Facebook banned Gambit payments from the platform and threatened any application developer with banning if they used Gambit. They were no worse than Offerpal or Super Rewards with respect to the types of offers they were running -- everyone was getting their offers from the same pool -- but Facebook banned Gambit and implicitly endorsed Offerpal and Super Rewards.
Gambit was the smallest of the three, so the general feeling in the FB developer community is that they picked the weakest one and took them out to show how "serious" they were in dealing with the problem. They also made SR and Offerpal clean up their offers and punished Zynga for running questionable offers, but only Gambit was permanently and forever banned.
So, given the above, I have to wonder...did Facebook ban lolapps, the smallest of the major FB game companies, from the platform as a way to preempt the press fallout from this article?
Very interesting.