Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is preparing to testify before Congress next week to answer questions about the company’s privacy and data policies.
In the meantime, Facebook has announced some changes to its APIs.
The changes come as no surprise, as Facebook has previously said it is reviewing “all apps that had access to large amounts of information before the platform change in 2014.”
The new restrictions affect several APIs: specifically, the Events, Groups, Pages, and Instagram APIs.
Here are some of the changes:
- Access to the Events, Groups, Pages, and Instagram APIs is being terminated for new developers.
- Starting today, all apps that have access or seek to gain access to the Events, Groups, and Pages API will be required to undergo a formal review. This means that apps that currently have access to the Events and Groups APIs will lose their access while they are under review.
- Facebook is also shutting down part of Instagram's API, which was scheduled to happen on July 31.
- Applications seeking to use the Groups API must first be approved by a Group administrator.
- Facebook will approve access to the Pages API based on whether apps “provide useful services to the community.”.
- Access to the Event guest list that attendees have will no longer be available to applications that use the Events API
The company also announced that starting Monday, a link will appear at the top of users’ news feeds that will take them to a page that will show how much of their data is being shared with third-party apps.
In a conference call with reporters, Zuckerberg said the goal of the changes was to ensure that users could only share the data they choose with the apps they want to connect to.
You can read more about the immediate changes made to the APIs here.
