
Facebook autobot going berserker  - ZeroC00l
http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?pid=355270
======
eugenez
Hey guys, I am a Facebook engineer working on this.

We've been getting a lot of user feedback recently, spiking significantly over
the past week, on the amount of application spam people are seeing in their
feeds and on their walls. We turned on a new enforcement system yesterday that
took user feedback much more heavily into account. This resulted in a number
of applications with high negative user feedback being disabled or having
certain features disabled. In particular, many applications were disabled
which posted to the walls of other users and had very high mark-as-spam
numbers.

My apologies for the suddenness of the action. The numbers were high enough to
cause a real loss of trust in applications, which can impact the entire
platform. Where we have failed is not providing enough feedback about negative
engagement metrics to developers before needing to take this action. This is
something we are working hard to fix with the new Application Insights that
will be launching over the next few weeks - you will have detailed information
about both positive and negative engagement of the content your application
generates.

If you think you have been disabled in error, you should have received an
email to your application's contact email address with a link to appeal. Just
in case, the appeal link is
[https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=dev_disa...](https://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=dev_disable_appeal)
. Note that no content is deleted when an application is disabled. If an
application is re-enabled, all the content posted by the application will once
again be visible.

-Eugene

~~~
theli0nheart
A couple things.

1\. I think I speak for everyone on HN when I say this is a really valuable
communication to all of us who have worked with Facebook.

2\. When a user shares content through an application, you should not penalize
the application itself when someone hides that content. I am almost positive
this is a large reason why these bans are happening. It is a ridiculous
measure of spamminess.

3\. You say you are trying to make the platform a better place for users by
preventing spammy content from appearing in their feeds. This in itself is
fine. But Facebook's actions are making feeds worse, not better. The actions
of a few should not impact the experience of many.

PS. Putting up the link to the appeals process is a really strange way to help
anyone out. As far as I recall, when my app was banned a couple of months ago,
that form wouldn't even work for me.

In other words, just step up and give the affected devs your email address so
that you can actually give them a real response. Putting their complaints /
concern into what is potentially a block hole inbox isn't very calming.

~~~
starwed
_When a user shares content through an application, you should not penalize
the application itself when someone hides that content. I am almost positive
this is a large reason why these bans are happening. It is a ridiculous
measure of spamminess._

The problem, I imagine, is that many games provide incentives for posting
stuff on other people's walls. That's clearly spam, but also technically
initiated by the user.

~~~
ignifero
Technically incentives are not allowed, but most apps resort to emotional
tricks. Best applied psychology experiment ever.

~~~
watmough
Wait until you deactivate your facebook account.

Then you get some real guilting. Your friends will miss you. Why don't you
send some messages now to let them know you're leaving. Awful.

------
catshirt
" _Guys, the moderators are volunteers, and we have no power over any of
Facebook's software (like the ban-bot) or their policies. We just delete spam
on the forums, mostly. We do have a way of raising issues to the FB employees,
and we have done so. Trouble is, they've been ignoring us (and everyone on the
forums too) for weeks or months._ "

wow, that's pretty sad. and i thought they were only ignoring _my_ problems.

~~~
tcolliers
We've had similar problems. We have a variety of apps running stuff like
posting scores to profiles. Recently we've had some apps disabled by what
looks like automated bots. We asked for an explanation every time and only got
a few vague template answers and a link to the policies. A colleague of mine
got banned from the developer app. He can't create new apps anymore and can't
reach a Facebook employee to correct it.

Facebook loves being invisible.

~~~
wisty
I do get annoyed at some of the span that hits my feed, but really, it's
facebook. If apps don't post, why would you put them on facebook?

It looks like facebook wants to get out of the whole platform game, and simple
be an OpenID provider, message platform, and photo host.

------
anthony_franco
Unfortunately, our application was also a victim of this widespread banning.
We built up a user base of over 2 millions users. As of yesterday, they're all
receiving a 404 error when attempting to visit our application. And we have no
way of reaching them.

Attempting to appeal to Facebook results in a generic email response
instructing us to begin the application anew.

Worst of all, deleting our application also deleted the photos our users took.
We had a video chat application that allowed users to take pictures together
with their friends. Over 1 million photo memories deleted by Facebook. It's
just a sad situation overall.

~~~
ignifero
It's their dreaded friday push which usually breaks things until monday. Dont
expect reinstatement until then.

~~~
rcrowell
Is this really something that happens regularly, to the point where you have a
name for it? I've had several issues with the facebook platform in the past,
but if breakage is really this common why aren't they doing anything about it?
(And why not do code releases on Monday at the very least?)

~~~
ignifero
It's not a specific day, it's all days, but most of the bugs i remember were
not fixed on weekends. Here's a bug i was watching:

<http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=16197> aka
<http://bugs.developers.facebook.net/show_bug.cgi?id=16191>

This was a severe bug despite its misleading title, our users got only blank
pages in IE and links did not work . It was pushed on a Thursday , then fixed
some time by Monday, then next wednesday it was broken again, and a fix came a
week later. [<http://www.facebook.com/eggbuddies/posts/10150171378998545>]
Shit happens a lot more often than one would expect in facebook.

For a better treatise, read this developer's lament:

<http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=100175>

P.s. I laughed hard when i saw this video:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2594083>

------
wwav10
We are from Playality, developer from Grand Poker. As many of you may know,
our application was disabled this morning for no apparent reason given. The
company spend huge amount of marketing dollars on adverts and product
development . Furthermore, many of our paid customers demand for refunds or
legal action. Grand Poker is our company main source of revenue, and it is
also funding other projects on facebook. This incident pretty much killed off
the company.

Also, using user's feedback may not be an accurate measurement to the quality
of the application. There are many methods or bot script that can simulate
users to mass complain the application. This is a very common strategy uses by
competitors.

all in all, we are still relatively new to for facebook, It may be possible
that we did somehow crossed the line in feeds or wallposting, but.is it worth
killing off a small start-up because of this?

------
bermanoid
I know there are plenty of Facebook people reading HN, so I can't help but
wonder why complaints about FB are never addressed here when they come up,
_especially_ when they're of this nature (this particular problem seems like a
glitch in code, not something that would require a massive business effort to
fix). The instant someone makes a complaint about some aspect of Google's
search algorithm, Matt Cutts appears out of the wild and addresses the
situation; I've seen many other Googlers comment on various issues, too,
letting us know that they've escalated issues as appropriate, or even just
that they're aware of problems but can't do anything about it.

What's up with the silence from the FBers in the crowd? Not allowed to say
anything? Don't know who to forward the issue to? Just don't care?

~~~
lbrandy
How come no witches ever show up to our witchhunt?

The vast majority of fb employees wouldn't know anything about this. They
couldn't say anything except something w/o any knowledge and cause more
problems.

~~~
bermanoid
That's a very fair point - HN is vastly more hostile to Facebook than it is to
Google, so it makes more sense that Googlers would pop in to calm things down.

~~~
thaumaturgy
I'm sure the hostility has _nothing_ to do with the lack of response, the
screw-ups, or the handling of the situation in general ...

But, I probably shouldn't even be in this thread, because I think that
building a huge user base that relies on someone else's closed & fickle
platform is a hilarious thing to do.

~~~
beck5
I truly believe its down to a deep misstrust of facebook and Zuckerberg which
started from day 0 of facebook.

------
ltamake
Really starting to hate Facebook more than I already do. As someone below
pointed out, their API is going to shit, and they're starting to become more
strict with their TOS. I know 5 friends who have had their Facebook accounts
forcibly closed or suspended, or put through this ridiculous "roadblock"
system that requires them to pick out 10 pictures from their friends' albums.
Regarding apps: someone notified me that their app had been suspended because
of "negative reactions" by users; only 10 people used the app, and it got one
one-star review. Lovely.

I did like Facebook at one point: two or three years ago. Now it's just
getting ridiculous.

~~~
Unseelie
Oh my god, half of my pictures aren't me at all...they're all just photos of
things I make..

~~~
ltamake
The roadblock system? Yeah, it's really flawed. I got roadblocked for logging
on to my account from a Swedish IP (through a VPN; I live in the UK). It took
me something like 10 tries to get through because I don't obsessively study my
friends' photos like Facebook expects me to.

~~~
VMG
to be fair they do this as a security measure, not to piss you off

~~~
ltamake
I know, but it's rubbish and they __do __piss users off. It's like a bank
obstructing the entrance until you give them the amount of 10 previous
deposits in your account. There's got to be a better way.

~~~
protomyth
Or the TSA's base argument for their actions. At some point the friction from
this type of stuff leaves a oppurtunity for the next guy.

------
npollock
Cue the conspiracy theorists, all the banned apps are photo related.

<http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/15/facebook-secret-photos-app/>

~~~
ChuckMcM
You are confusing the term 'conspiracy' with 'monetizing _our_ platform' :-)

------
steve114
I'm not a developer but I'm appalled at this.

No human review of banned apps with millions of users. Moderators who
volunteer to build the brand of FB are simply ignored.

The problem is that even if your apps are reinstated, the damage may have
already been done.

Sorry guys...

------
vessenes
This is all because of Google.

No, really. Google decided they could scale better if they used computers to
do customer service, or just didn't have customer service. In exchange, they
didn't charge anything for a lot of their services and told people 'deal with
it.'

This worked well for Google! Facebook is staffed extremely lightly given their
reach; stuff like this is just going to keep happening. I have no idea if the
app developer deserved it, but these 'free to play' broad-reach companies
CAN'T provide the service this app developer feels he/she needs, they wouldn't
scale properly if they did.

~~~
bermanoid
_these 'free to play' broad-reach companies CAN'T provide the service this app
developer feels he/she needs, they wouldn't scale properly if they did._

Bollocks. I realize there's probably a lot of app spam, and of course you want
to deal with a lot of that in an automated manner, but we're talking about
apps that have built up millions of users here, it is in no way unreasonable
to expect at least one lowly paid human to look into these cases before
shutting them down. A single person could probably clear a hundred of these
cases in a day, especially if the automated system gave them info on why it
thinks the app should be banned - if it says there are too many negative
reviews, that's real simple to check, if it catches a TOS violation, that's
also real simple.

Here, it looks a lot like someone (maybe accidentally?) turned the sensitivity
threshold too high on the ban-bot and never bothered to check if it was
working right because it's not public facing enough.

As far as the Google comparison, to me that's rather unfair, because in the
case of Google's app store, they _don't_ tend to go around auto-banning large
numbers of popular applications. So whatever algorithms they're using are
doing a pretty good job, as opposed to Facebook's, which are apparently
flailing like crazy.

~~~
Joakal
Facebook has a culture of introducing live testing according to some developer
statements so it's slightly surprising that this happened.

Google seems to test their systems well, except for UI changes though.

------
splitrocket
Facebook's API has become increasingly unstable. They recently dropped
millions of oauth tokens for no apparent reason. See here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2661850>

------
mpunaskar
Thast why i would never rely on closed platform.

I will never waste my resource in build apps that solely rely on closed
commercial entities like facebook, apple. If they choose to ban/block/delete
you then all of your hard-work is gone in a second and will leave your users
unhappy.

and this can happen to any of us

~~~
ryanisinallofus
Is your site just future feature of Google? They provide us with 80% of our
traffic and have launched features that directly compete with us.

It doesn't only happen on "closed" platforms.

~~~
mpunaskar
True, It can happen on any platform, but at least you will get time to improve
your app + add new features + fight with biggies while they are trying to copy
from you.

On facebook and Apple they will just kill your app in a day.

~~~
ryanisinallofus
Google could drop you from results, but yeah I get your point.

~~~
rick888
but you can still get people to your site through any means (not just Google).
If you build a Facebook or Twitter app, and either of those companies compete
with you, change their apis, ban you, your company is pretty much finished.

This is why I don't waste any time writing those kind of apps.

------
Osiris
This seems to me to be indicative of a problem with the Facebook apps
platform. They are using significant resources to try to combat spam, but the
spam is posted through the mechanisms provided by the platform.

What I'm suggesting is that the Facebook apps platform is fundamentally making
it _easy_ to post spam so they have to fight it afterward.

Would a better approach be to shore up the platform so that apps are simply
unable to generate spam? For example, currently a user can only Allow or
Disallow an app. They cannot Allow or Disallow certain permissions. I should
be able to use an app while denying it the possibility to post to my wall or
my friends walls.

It seems like it's the wrong approach to try to stop the spam by banning apps
rather than fundamentally changing the way apps can access person sites and
information and make generating spam incredibly difficult.

~~~
patja
If they every put hard API limits on how apps can post they would be cutting
Zynga off at the knees. On the day that happens I'll be at the snowball fight
in Hades!

------
EGreg
Always get your users' emails when they sign up. Facebook even has the email
extended persmission to streamline it. That way you aren't 100% reliant on
facebook to keep in touch with your users! You never know what they are gonna
do.

------
powertower
> Don´t know what to do. I am desperate. This app is my company´s single
> product. The business impact is huge. No warnings. No specifics.

(<http://forum.developers.facebook.net/viewtopic.php?id=103384>)

Now imagine Google dropping you from the index for whatever reason.

How many of us here would be wiped out?

A business that's dependant on a single channel or platform for more than 20%
of its revenue/profit is not a real business as much as it is a sugardaddy's
dependent?

~~~
rs40
Being your own bitch is better than someone else.

~~~
powertower
Not really sure where you're going with that.

A) Standard employee B) Self-employed but at complete mercy of a company
(facebook) which does not know you even exist, who's everyday change of mood
could wipe you out

Does not really sound like much was gained going from A to B.

With A you're simply lost (in life). With B you're blind.

~~~
rs40
Yes, both A and B is still consider as someone's else b*tch

Ideally, the best option is to find your own niche without relying "too much"
on other's platform.

------
andylei
problem is that facebook doesn't really have too much of an incentive to care
about these developers. they are not like apple, whose products include third
party apps as part of the core value proposition. when steve jobs sells you an
iphone, one big reason you buy it is because it has thousands of great apps.
people don't sign up for facebook because of farmville, farmville uses
facebook because people have already signed up for facebook.

thus, when apple's developers get screwed and there's no app ecosystem, there
is the potential for decreased sales. when facebook apps disappear, i doubt
there are a lot of people leaving facebook.

~~~
ignifero
They have an incentive: FB credits generates significant revenue to them
already, plus games are a contributing factor to user retention. It may become
more significant to user retention by filling the void now that social
activity has peaked and everyone has caught up with their highschool friends.

~~~
noahth
Don't forget ad revenue. Facebook developers spend enormous sums on Facebook
ads. Probably bigger than Credits, at least until next month.

~~~
noahth
oh and also - games/apps drive tons of pageviews for FB.

------
alanh
“Operation Developer Love” is what Facebook calls their weekly report on the
state of bugs in their developer/app platform.

Looks like if there was really developer love, they wouldn’t need to market
their love of developers.

------
atlas3651
Our primary app got shut down for "spamminess" on 6/20/11 (one week ago). We
had 4M users. We've appealed. No response. A lot of users contact us
plaintively hoping the app will come back. Sigh. Another small tech business
will go kaput (ours) and half a million bucks will go down the tubes.

This is obviously just another similar data point on this thread, but what I
want to add is to the discussion is this idea: why not create an completely
OSS facebook? If a bitcoin can exist (and hell, a Linux), why not a
decentralized open-source facebook? The core functionality is not that
complex, IMHO. Well, Linux is complex and it took decades to perfect... but
the need for it was pretty clear and it's proved itself. But Facebook, OTOH,
is not a complex operating system or even a super-complex search engine (ala
Google). It's simply a network of interconnected user accounts with certain
assets assigned to each account (history, preferences, content, etc), and info
feeds (transient) delivered to those accounts via various formats.

If such a project were OSS, people would design their own feed sorting algo's,
their own notification systems, and most of all their own "spam" filtering
systems, as plugins, all of which could mean nobody needs to "go dark" to
satisfy the whims of one corporate entity.

~~~
atlas3651
Hmm, a simple google search found Project Diaspora <https://joindiaspora.com/>
which aims to do what I just wrote. Wonder how close they really are...

------
pstack
It's hard for me to have sympathy when people choose to develop for Facebook
instead of for the Internet. When you are contributing to the problem, you
have to accept a certain level of potential downside and lack of control.
There's a massive internet out there. You know, everything that is not
facebook.com and you can do pretty much everything on it, but without being
subjected to the rules and whims of anyone else.

------
yaix
Reminds me of Google Adwords and Adsense Bots banning random accounts. Better
dont put all your eggs into one basket and dont develop for only one company
you then will be dependent on. Especially if the company is as big as G or FB.
They dont care loosing a few good publishers, but a publisher who has invested
all his time or money will care.

Hope FB will react better then G and reactivate their apps.

------
topherjaynes
When Roger Ebert's page was banned on the 21st his complaint was reversed with
in a few hours... <http://twitter.com/#!/ebertchicago/status/831526706464686>

So it can be done, hopefully the attention in HN will help

~~~
puredemo
Sure, if you are a celebrity.

------
evanw
It looks like GoodReads was banned within the last 24 hours from Facebook as
well: [http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/314867-goodreads-and-
fac...](http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/314867-goodreads-and-
facebook#comment_id_32448117)

------
lukejduncan
I find it interesting that most of my non-technical friends actively dislike
Facebook. Their growth comes from new markets while their existing user-base
grows increasingly dissatisfied.

------
wccrawford
Wow, you'd think banning would be important enough to pay someone minimum wage
to sift through and find the ones that don't make sense.

~~~
Unseelie
Would you trust someone at minimum wage to do it?

At the same time, FB makes lots of money per capita. They could hire a few
grunt banhammer moderators.

~~~
wccrawford
Alright, maybe slightly more than minimum.

But yes, I would. If their job was to sort through and find questionable bans,
and they knew their job would be on the line if they missed too many, they'd
do a decent job. Certainly better than is being done right now.

After all, for the same wages, they could be flipping burgers instead. I know
which I'd pick. The nice, cool office.

~~~
Unseelie
I'll do it from home. Don't even have to provide an office!

Course, what's it cost to buy someone in india an office and pay a wage?

------
zaidf
I feel we need an independent org that does arbitration of API/platform-
related cases. Have a complaint about Facebook's API? File it with the
independent org and as a member of the org, Facebook will be forced to resolve
it in a fair manner or take a reputation hit.

The most extreme cases could be decided by a human arbitrator.

~~~
jleader
But in this case, it sounds like FB is already taking a reputation hit (at
least among the HN demographic), with no apparent effect.

~~~
zaidf
True - but I think it'll be a little different if an official independent
organization gives them a "Poor" rating for support or platform reliability.

~~~
code_duck
Who's the audience that would be more influenced by a rating like that?

------
arihant
I highly doubt that the 'conspiracy theories' popping up against the photo
apps are correct. If they are, then facebook has bigger problems than lack of
API stability. Good tech companies and engineers should be confident enough in
their work. Try searching for 'search' on Google.

------
steve114
Looks like TechCrunch caught on to this thread, sorry if it was already posted
by someone else.

[http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/25/facebooks-ban-bot-leaves-
so...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/06/25/facebooks-ban-bot-leaves-some-
developers-baffled-and-angry/)

------
crazymik3
It's pretty interesting that most of the apps seem to be photo related, with
lots of users.

------
patja
Old news. Facebook told us in a developer blog entry months ago that the auto-
ban bot looks at user feedback such as hides, comments, uninstalls, mark as
spam, extended permissions prompt acceptance rates etc. And you as an app
developer can actually see all of this data through the Insights feature of
the developer app.

Too many developers have their head in the sand and think just because they
have 1 million users and a 4 star review rating that everything is peachy. The
fact is there are a ton of crap apps that spew out BS. Maybe the user who
installed the app thinks it is great to spam all of their friends' feeds, but
when those friends hide the app's posts, mark it as spam, etc. then the app is
going to risk auto-banning.

I know folks on HN don't play Farmville or spend all day on these apps like
fortune cookie, quiz of the day, etc., but bazillions of FB users have nothing
but app-generated posts on their walls.

~~~
robryan
Sure, if spammy apps were engaged by staff at Facebook, notified of specific
issues and giving an amount of time to fix there wouldn't be an issue, instead
things are getting auto deleted without even a look over by a person.

------
reustle
Where is that quote about not depending on a platform that is out of your
control?

------
antihero
How can automatic banning/deletion of content ever be a good idea?

~~~
jleader
Two words: spam filters.

------
dendory
Step 1: Base your entire business model on the latest buzzing platform
(Facebook) Step 2: ???? Step 3: Profit!!! ... Step 4: Get banned, lose all
your hard earned work.

------
veyron
What was the fred wilson quote about not being _____'s bitch?

------
ignifero
It baffles me why there are no large competing social gaming web platforms.
Google, Zynga, EA (playfish) could easily start one. It's a guaranteed
success: people love games to be social. Facebook developers are so
disgruntled with the FB platform that they 'd flock in hordes to convert their
games.

On top of that, facebook enforces FB credits from July, and banned adsense
advertising in apps. We are not going to pay 30% of our revenue to facebook
for such a crappy platform. We moved our apps to an external website.

~~~
wccrawford
I think it's because you need the rest of the platform to make it work. FB
games took off by spamming your friends and getting them hooked, too.

If the platform only has games, there's nothing really to spam... It's not
like people are watching their wall for activity at that point.

There ARE gaming networks out there, BTW. They just really haven't taken off.
Search for 'social gaming site' to find some.

~~~
ltamake
Steam could be considered a gaming network, I suppose. It has a pretty strong
community behind it.

~~~
ignifero
I think the parent is right that it has to be more social- than gaming-
oriented

------
bcl
Yay! Less apps for me to add to my block list.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Cool, let's all cheer about the fact that a lot of developers just got
screwed, and so did a lot of their users.

~~~
bcl
Yep. Facebook would actually be tolerable if it weren't for all the stupid
apps that keep popping up. I wouldn't be so annoyed if there was a global app
shutoff switch. Then again if there was they'd probably switch it back on
randomly just like they do with my other settings.

