This page was updated on May 3, 2018.

Facebook recently became a major troublemaker for the SNAP.

[March 2018] Unstable Graph API 2.12

It started with the release of the very buggy and unstable Graph API 2.12. The first thing it broke is the ability to post to pages as “page name”.  Posts were posted as personal name and went to the “community” section of the page.  Facebook acknowledged the bug and tried to fix it. As of today it’s fixed for most users, but some are still experiencing it. More info about that here.

Graph API 2.12 also removed the ability to post to any groups (even public) where you just a member. Only admins can post to groups.

Graph API 2.12 also tightened up security basically forcing people to switch sites to https (ssl) protocol. It came in form of “Insecure Login Blocked: You can’t get an access token or log in to this app from an insecure page. Try re-loading the page as https://” error. More info about that here.

To make things worse (much worse) right after the release of already unstable Graph API 2.12 Facebook got hit with now famous “User’s data leak” issue.  Data got leaked through the misuse of API apps, so Facebook started to shake it down. Right now all apps are getting reviewed and checked for undesired activities. As the result platform become unstable to almost unusable level.  Many apps just randomly stop working partially or completely.  Some apps lost an ability to be authorized, some can’t post to groups anymore, some can’t post to pages, some apps are getting  temporarily disabled.

All kinds of pretty useless error messages are thrown:

(#200) Access to this data is temporarily disabled for non-active accounts due to changes we are making to the Facebook Platform
(#200) Permissions error
(#200) The user has not authorized the application to perform this action.
(#283) Requires manage_pages permission to manage the object
Platform Access Disabled: Access temporarily disabled due to changes to the Facebook Platform.

[April 5, 2018] End of Groups API

As this wasn’t enough Facebook issued a new statement announcing the end of some API features used by SNAP.  It looks like starting today Groups are no longer available though the API at all. It’s also unclear what will happened to pages.

The end of autoposting to Groups comes in form of this error:

Unsupported post request. Object with ID ‘***************’ does not exist, cannot be loaded due to missing permissions, or does not support this operation
.

[April 25, 2018] publish_actions permission has been disabled.

Invalid Scopes: publish_actions.

All new Facebook applications created after Apr 25, 2018 can’t be authorized with publish_actions permission. More info about that here: Facebook Error: Invalid Scopes: publish_actions.

[May 1, 2018] End unrestricted access to Facebook API.

Facebook officially closed unrestricted access to its API. All apps created on or after May 1st 2018 require app review and approval to be able to post. All apps created before May 1st 2018 will stop working on August 1, 2018.  More info about that here: Facebook officially closed unrestricted access to its API.

Now What? / What’s next?

Three things.
1. We already made our own alternative API library for Facebook that does not depend of its native API and its issues. It’s not free, but it’s very easy to setup and use and it works. SNAP Premium API for Facebook
2. SNAP was always based on the idea of making 100% white-labeled posts. We never wanted to act like a middleman between you and your accounts. You sites post directly to your accounts using your own apps. Now we will investigate the possibility of creating a service that will act as a middleman. We are not sure Facebook will agree to that, but we will try.
3. Facebook reviewed and approved apps should be working fine with existing plugin code. We will try to submit several apps to Facebook for review and we will see if Facebook approves them. If they do, we will create a guide and update our instructions.

[UPDATE]: Full featured NextScripts API for Facebook has been released. It has all features that Facebook removed from its native API including the ability to post to profiles, pages (as page name), and all kinds of groups (open, secret, closed).