Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is preparing to testify before Congress next week to answer questions about the company's privacy and data policy.
Meanwhile Facebook has announced some changes to its APIs.
The changes are not a surprise, as Facebook had announced that it was conducting an audit of “all the apps they had access in large amounts of information before the change of the platform in 2014.”
The new restrictions affect several APIs: specifically, the Events APIs, Groups, Pages and Instagram.
Here are some of the changes:
- Access to API Events, Groups, Pages, and Instagram ends with new developers.
- From now on, all applications that access or seek access to Events, Groups, and Pages APIs should be subject to an official review. This means that applications currently accessing Events and Groups APIs will lose access as long as they are controlled.
- Facebook also closes part of Instagram's API, which was scheduled to take place on July 31.
- Apps that seek to use the Groups API must first be approved by a Group Administrator.
- Facebook will approve access to the Pages API based on whether the applications "provide useful services to the community".
- Accessing participants' list of Events invited will no longer be available in applications using the Events API
The company also announced that from Monday a link will appear at the top of the news feed of the users, which will lead to a page showing how much of their data they share with third-party applications.
At a teleconference with reporters, Zuckerberg said the goal of the changes was to ensure that users could only share the data they choose with applications they want to connect.
You can read more about the direct changes made to APIs from here.
