
Breakup Notifier Shut Down By Facebook - ssclafani
http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/23/breakup-notifier/
======
theli0nheart
It'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>

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>), 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?

~~~
thehotdon
I wouldn't be surprised if facebook just "borrows" the idea and implements it
on their own. They would have a significant advantage due to the lack of API
restrictions.

~~~
code_duck
I think FB would get some bad press if they offered a feature like this
directly. Not for screwing over a developer (nobody but other developers care
about that), but for the privacy violation/stalking feel the whole thing has.

~~~
bittermang
You say that as if bad press or privacy concerns have had any impact on
Facebook thus far.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Are you serious? Beacon is gone. When the privacy stuff was hitting the fan,
they designed/engineered a totally new privacy console in a week.

They ignore bad press and privacy concerns in order to move the project
forward in major ways. Like adding News Feeds, or allowing entirely classes of
API interaction (Beacon). They don't do it for little features like breakup
notifications.

------
edw519
In 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
On 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).

~~~
lallysingh
Your 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.

~~~
tastybites
That's why the smart thing to do is open several locations, which is what
restaurateurs generally aspire to, for that very reason. Sometimes it
backfires, usually it doesn't if the restaurateur knows what they're doing.

------
douglasp
I 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
Why was the developer's personal account disabled?

How is the developer supposed to contact Facebook via a disabled user account?

~~~
douglasp
The 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.

~~~
chopsueyar
Thank you for the response. You are a mensch.

------
jdp23
And they disabled his personal account too. Not the best way to get yourself
to be seen as a good platform for developers.

~~~
theoj
Disabling his account is either a display of creepy dictatorial power or an
indication of incompetence and lack of common sense.

~~~
tptacek
Or, 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.

~~~
jdp23
An automated system that can't distinguish between a very successful
application and a spammer doesn't sound particularly sensible to me.

~~~
alex_c
In the Facebook ecosystem, that's often a very fine line.

------
raganwald
Meta-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?

~~~
moultano
No. I don't own facebook's hardware. Apple's terms for their app store
wouldn't be so onerous if there was another legal/good way to install software
on your own device.

~~~
cryptoz
Jailbreaking is entirely legal. And jailbroken phones allow for the
installation of arbitrary software. So really, iOS Terms are not as big of a
deal as you make them out to be then?

I think that the legality of the task is important, but it's also pretty
critical how supported that task is. While it's legal to jailbreak, it's also
(probably? unknown) legal for Apple to accidentally brick your phone during
updates.

~~~
sjs
Not every device/OS combination can be easily jailbroken. Apple actively
fights to keep us out of our own devices, and that has rubbed me the wrong way
since I got an iPhone in the summer of 2009. I'll buy an Android or webOS
phone next without question.

That we can jailbreak is no consolation for, say, Grooveshark. They put in a
lot of work into their iOS app and it's still only available to a relative
handful of users on Cydia. It's great we have Cydia but it sucks that you have
to join some elite nerd club to use it. Make no mistake, only people who are
at least slightly geeky jailbreak devices. Most people cringe at the word
"jailbreak" and are scared of bricking their phones. It's a very hard thing to
explain to non-technical folk.

Grooveshark focuses instead on other mobile platforms. That's not good for the
iOS ecosystem, it's not good for iOS users, and it's not good for Grooveshark.
(I can't say that it's not good for Apple because as a result of not having
Grooveshark on the store they might be retaining music sales on iTunes.)

~~~
Skroob
Why should Apple make it easy to jailbreak? That's spending development
resources directly against their own interest.

That said, you have complete access to your own device, but you don't own the
OS running on it. If you want to figure out a way to run Android or something
else on it, you're absolutely within your rights to do so, but Apple isn't
under any obligation, legal or otherwise, to make it easy for you.

As for Grooveshark, it's a shame for them that they're not on the App Store,
but it looks like they were for a bit and then got DMCA'd for some reason.
There's nothing particular about the app itself that is objectionable for the
store, considering Pandora is up there just fine and it seems like they're the
same kind of thing. Jailbreak+Cydia is an alternative, but again, it's not
Apple's job to make it a viable one.

------
DanielBMarkham
This 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
Well, 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>

"

~~~
qq66
Maybe he should try to be an average 26-year-old instead of such an "outlier."

------
ggordan
"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
My 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
I'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.

------
soulclap
Breakup Notifier's relationship status: It's complicated.

------
il
And 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.

~~~
rudiger
That'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.

~~~
sahillavingia
It's a lot higher than 10,000 [1].

[1] - Dan told me.

EDIT: (the parent comment once said 10,000, now changed.)

------
shrikant
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2243708>

I wonder if he's feeling honoured yet? :-)

------
acangiano
Original discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2243650>

------
rexf
> "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
My 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.

~~~
rhizome
Is 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.

~~~
joe_the_user
I'd speculate that extracting more information here is a gray area in general
but it should be clear that this would be the "blackest part" of the gray -
ie, potential stalking/exploitation material.

Facebook lets people post where they are when. An app that determines when
someone isn't home _or_ when someone is alone in a dangerous area would still
be undesirable.

Note also - Friend doesn't let someone explicit reject a friend request and it
doesn't let people "unlike". This may seem dictatorial but in many ways it's
"good moderation/curation of the space". It's just as logical for Facebook to
remove apps that want to add "the forgotten" "reject button"/"unlike button".

~~~
rhizome
I doubt it's a gray area in the FB offices. The strategy is about more info in
than info out, so the flow directions are certainly controlled resources. The
rules don't even allow you to use someone's FB profile picture unless they're
_currently logged in_. This is an important point.

------
kevt
Anyone 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
I'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
Isn'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..

------
initself
My dreams were crushed exactly like this with MySpace. That's why I don't
touch the stuff anymore.

------
100k
Does 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/>

------
Tycho
They're probably mad they didn't think of it first.

------
Peaker
We will miss the open web.

------
makeee
Did 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?

------
davidk0101
This 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.

------
jacques_chester
Sometimes, when facing an sudden, arbitrary decision with no appeals process,
high ceremony seems like a _good_ thing.

------
ot
Maybe 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.

------
motters
You can always be kicked out of a walled garden.

------
paulnelligan
I'm pretty sure that Zuck is trying to 'own' the internet. Big pity since Tim
Berners Lee originally gave it away for free.

------
jarin
Well that was quick. Who's gonna notify the notifier?

~~~
gaiusparx
You need a Facebook App Breakup Notifier app.

------
vchien
Could I get a copy..:P

------
rorrr
Here'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
In 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
Microsoft doesn't ban apps. They don't even have an easy way of doing so.

