HN Explorer

Why Facebook should Police their API (bandwidthblog.com)

8 points by jasonadriaan ↗ HN
For years we have been warned to be careful of what we installed or even what we clicked on Facebook, but as malware on the social network runs rampant don’t you think that it’s time we demand Facebook to pay attention? The malware issue on Facebook is a much bigger problem than they lead us to believe because it strikes at the very foundations of their established ecosystem.

8 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 27.0 ms ] thread
cn
My profile wall is littered with Osama photo/video posts, why doesn't Facebook have tech in place that stop apps when their post frequency to walls gets out of hand?
hotdox
They can use design solution, folding messages from one app to single message
bxr
>why doesn't Facebook have tech in place that stop apps when their post frequency to walls gets out of hand

Because Facebook is an advertizing platform. Apps can send as much garbage as they want and you can just ban the app from from your feed.

wccrawford
They do. The fact that they took that app down is proof of it.

What you want is for them to moderate everything that is posted, and that's just not possible. Even the heuristics for detecting rogue apps is tough and probably beyond their abilities, considering the manpower it would take to create and hardware to execute.

jasonadriaan
Took them days even after being published all over the news. Apps should be checked before they go public. Having said that the Bin Laden malware didn't use the API although many other apps do.
trekmambo
If Facebook were to police their API like Jobs they would have to do another billion dollar VC round.
trekmambo
unless of course they start charging, which I doubt they'll ever do.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)