Updates to Facebook Platform Policy

After receiving input from the community and holding a vote, we recently put into place the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), which serve as the foundation for the relationship between Facebook and our users, advertisers, and developers. The SRR replaces the Developer Terms of Service (and other documents), and we hope you find the new plain English format easier to read and understand.

In the spirit of keeping things simple, we reorganized the Platform Guidelines to make it easier for you to find what you're looking for. We also rolled together into that single document several sets of developer policies that were spread out among the Developer Wiki main policy page, the Facebook Connect policy page, and other places. Going forward, this new version of the Platform Guidelines and the SRR are the only policy documents that will apply to developers and applications.

The new Guidelines document has almost the same content as the previous version of the policies. The few changes we made were primarily to accommodate product changes, eliminate redundancy, and clarify ambiguities. For example, we clarified that user data you get from the API is always subject to the restrictions on storage (so you shouldn't pre-fill data in a form for users to submit to your application if you plan to store that data; users should enter that information directly). But the caching restrictions have been modified to allow for retaining user data you get from Facebook beyond 24 hours in certain offline situations. And we more clearly explained the policy around use of Facebook’s product terms and trademarks.

Our policies are designed to help create a thriving ecosystem for developers and ensure a great experience for every user who interacts with Facebook or applications on or off Facebook. Over time we hope to take additional steps to improve policy and provide you with assistance in achieving success and building the best possible user experience.

The new version of the Platform Guidelines goes into effect Tuesday 12 May 2009 at noon Pacific time. If you have questions or comments we’d love to hear from you in the Developer Forum. For private matters please feel free to reach out to us directly via our Developer Help Contact Form.