Facebook Platform Changes in Development

To maintain the trust people place in Facebook when they share information, we are making some updates to the way our platform works. Last week, we announced a number of changes that impact the Facebook developer community. These are critical steps that involve reviewing developers' actions for evidence of misuse, implementing additional measures to protect data, and giving people more control of their information.

We made the following changes:

• Pause app review: We paused app review last week while we implement new changes to our platform.
• Access to user friends requires Login Review: We are treating user_friends as an extended permission that requires Login Review.

In the upcoming days and beyond, we will:

• Conduct an in-depth review of our platform: We will investigate all apps that had access to large amounts of information before we changed our platform in 2014 to reduce data access, and we are conducting a full audit of any app with suspicious activity.
• Inform people if an app is removed for data misuse: If we find developers that misused personally identifiable information, we will ban them from our platform. Moving forward, if we remove an app for misusing data, we will notify everyone who used it.
• Encourage people to manage the apps they use: We already show people what apps their accounts are connected to and control what data they’ve permitted those apps to use. In the coming month, we’re going to make these choices more prominent and easier to manage.
• Require heightened terms for business-to-business applications: All developers that build applications for other businesses will need to comply with rigorous policies and terms, which we will share in the coming weeks.
• Reward people who find vulnerabilities: Facebook’s bug bounty program will expand so that people can also report to us if they find misuses of data by app developers. We are beginning work on this and will have more details as we finalize the program updates in the coming weeks.

We know these changes are not easy, but we believe these updates will help mitigate any breach of trust with the broader developer ecosystem. Facebook would like to thank you and the entire global developer community for working with us to create a better experience for people. We will continue to post updates as we have them over the next few weeks.