Facebook Disables All LOLapps Games and Apps | Hacker News Reader

Facebook Disables All LOLapps Games and Apps

insidesocialgames.com

71 pointsnathanlrivera21 comments

The standard operating procedure for working on the FB platform is "do as much as you can get away with". The FB compliance team seems to enforce their rules pretty unevenly and with varying aggressiveness, which makes breaking their rules pretty profitable.

They've done a decent job getting rid of the absolute worst offenders, mainly the display ad networks, but when there's people grossing $100k/day on IQ quiz scams it's hard to find people who WONT look to make an easy buck. I know of at least handful of people who have become millionaires tricking (admittedly rather dumb) teens into signing up for these offers.

I don't know any specifics about what LOLApps was doing, but I would assume they're just the most visible offender of whatever scammy tactic was being employed.

The SOP is definitely to get away with anything until you get caught but everyone was looking at what everyone else was doing as an example of what could be done. I worked (past tense) for a much smaller FB game company. The two compliance warnings we got were both on Friday afternoons, which is kinda interesting. It always seemed like they were that kind of 24/7 startup, and you had to be too just to keep up. Anyway, LOLApps was one of the companies that a lot of the smaller guys seemed to look up to, so this sends some kind of message. I'm just not sure what it is yet. :)

It seems to me that what we're seeing is the slow consolidation of technology into a few dozen monopolies: Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, now Facebook.

These monopolies allow other small business to exist at their pleasure in sort of a symbiotic relationship. Sometimes there are clear guidelines, but mostly there's a lot of room for interpretation and fudging. People push the limits, then every now and then the Lord of the Fiefdom takes a few out and shoots them (economically, of course) for misbehavior.

If we had this same situation in real life it would be obvious that there is a problem going on. But somehow because it's all digital it seems to be okay. For now.

It will be very interesting to see how this all plays out over the next couple of decades.

I think this is just a "dark ages" kind of thing. The reason why the internet works is because it is a distributed system. As Alan Kay would call it "the only true object oriented system in operation" I hope people will realize that you cannot depend in a benevolent overlord and try to use their own infrastructure.

People use the word monopoly very casually and rhetorically, but never correctly.

I blame the board game Monopoly. You get Board Walk and Park Place, and they call it a monopoly. Linguistic injustice!

Surely there's room to redefine the 'pure' definition of monopoly to include relative hegemony. No? Well that's how it's being used.

And this is why the thought of developing solely for a locked-in platform scares the crap out of me. I'm interested in the specifics, of course, but seeing repeats of both the Facebook and Apple random-dev-bans makes me wonder how anyone could justify staking their livelihood on something like this.

As many of my SEO friends say, it is easy to love Google when you aren't one penalty away from homelessness.

Microsoft may have had a closed environment, but they never had a controlled environment

Microsoft's David Cole emailed Phil Barrett on September 30 1991: "It's pretty clear we need to make sure Windows 3.1 only runs on top of MS DOS or an OEM version of it," and "The approach we will take is to detect DR DOS 6 and refuse to load. The error message should be something like 'Invalid device driver interface."

MicroSoft wasn't exercising control over what you did with your Windows 3.1 there, they were just being a (anti-competitive) dick about what you ran it on. Having a controlled environment in this context is, controlling what can run in the environment that you provide, rather than controlling what environment the stuff you provide can run it.

and we all used to hate on Microsoft so much, but they never 'pulled' a windows app

You run Windows applications locally and no-one but you has control about what you do with your Windows installation (mostly). Microsoft simply could not pull applications even if they wanted to.

Embrace your freedom by utilising it. Consider how the future might look like if everything is "in the cloud", remote and you are at the provider's grace to be allowed to access your tools and data.

Disclaimer: I run Linux because it is convenient and I think a gnu are cute animals (as in: I am not an extremist loony).

There was something about Windows Media player being able to revoke a local media file that was in breach of whatever the rule for the day was, wasn't there? Sorry about being vague but it's years since I was in Microsoft land. But yeah, this kind of stuff by Facebook surprises me not in the slightest. As a software company, would you be bothered getting into the compliance game? That's like being a software house and a cop shop.

No, but occasionally they chose to create a detailed duplicate of your app and give it away for free, especially if you had turned down a buy out offer.

So does Facebook. :)

Urgh.. gurgle... believe me, I know all about that.

Just wait until they launch an app store for their new Windows 7 Phone operating system.

Does deliberately crashing Windows when your software is detected count? Microsoft were accused of doing this to DR-DOS. Alas, as part of a settlement, Microsoft paid DR's successor $150 million and in return they destroyed all evidence of Microsoft's actions thus making it impossible for Microsoft to be effectively prosecuted for their behaviour.

Because they didn't have the capability to do so? I'm sure they would have "pulled" malicious apps if it were possible.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com