Recently, all Twitter posts that were cross-published by users on Facebook disappeared and it was believed to be because of the API restrictions that Facebook imposed on third-party app developers. In a statement to Axios, the company clarified that the reason cross-posted tweets were deleted was because Twitter deleted its Facebook platform app, which was no longer usable since its API access was severed. However, what’s more worrisome is that neither of the social media platforms estimated or had any reason to believe that deletion of the app could cause data loss. The deleted cross-published posts have since been restored.
“A Twitter admin requested their app be deleted, which resulted in content that people had cross-posted from Twitter to Facebook also being temporarily removed from people’s profiles,” Facebook said in a statement to Axios. “However, we have since restored the past content and it’s now live on people’s profiles.” This snafu is a reminder that sometimes even social media platforms don’t have every aspect of their service under control. However, this could be just an isolated incident and we already know that Facebook is working on solving the issue of third-party API integration. The company had previously barred third-party apps from accessing sensitive data of the users of a group and back in July, it re-allowed these apps into Groups, but this time they need to go through a stricter human-reviewed approval process and don’t have the access to the list of members and other sensitive data.
Talking about the development, Facebook said, “What you’re seeing today is related to changes we announced in April that require developers to go through an updated app review process in order to use the Groups API. As part of this, some developers who have gone through the review process are now able to access the Groups API.” Till April, apps needed the permission of a group admin or member to access group content for closed groups, and the permission of an admin for secret groups. Facebook later changed these settings to make sure the users are better protected.