Facebook rolls out changes to some APIs, shutting down some while adding restrictions and mandatory app reviews to others, in wake of Cambridge Analytica

In late March, we promised to take a hard look at the information apps can use when you connect them to Facebook. We’ve shared a few updates since then — including on April 4, April 24 and at F8 in May. Today, I want to explain additional API restrictions we are putting in place to better protect people’s information:

• Today, developers can run test queries using our Graph API Explorer App. We will deprecate the app today, July 2, and developers will then need to use their own apps’ access tokens to do test queries on the Graph API Explorer.
• The Profile Expression Kit is used by approved developers to enable people to share photos and videos created in their apps as profile pictures and videos on Facebook. We’re deprecating this tool on October 1 due to low adoption.
• Media Solutions is a family of APIs that enables developers to build tools for our media partners – including interactive experiences like polling and voting around TV broadcasts. Going forward public content discovery APIs will be limited to page content and public posts on certain verified profiles. We also recently deprecated the Trending API and Signal tool for journalists along with the Trending Topics product as well as Hashtag Voting for interactive TV experiences. On August 1, we plan to deprecate Topic Search, Topic Insights and Topic Feed and Public Figure APIs due to low usage.
• We’re making it possible for developers to search for Facebook Pages via the Pages API again. This will enable them to more easily find similar Pages, to @mention other Pages in Facebook comments or posts, and tag a Page in a Facebook ad for co-branding purposes. However, developers will need feature permissions to Page Public Content Access, which can only be obtained through the app review process.
• The Marketing API helps businesses automate and scale their advertising on Facebook – including the creation of ads and the management of campaigns. Today, we’re introducing an app review before developers can use this API and simplifying it from three tiers to a new, two-tier structure.
• We are introducing new app review permissions for the Lead Ads Retrieval and Live video APIs.

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