Facebook announced today that it is letting individual developers who aren’t associated with a business go through its revised app review process in order to regain access to certain APIs, after shutting them out earlier this year.
In May, Facebook revised its app review in response to criticism over how easily the creators of a personality quiz app were able to give user data over to analytics firm Cambridge Analytica. As part of the revised app review, developers who wanted to gain access to certain APIs had to verify the identity of the business they were associated with by providing copies of bills, articles of incorporation, tax ID numbers, or other forms of documentation. They also had to describe and/or show through a screencast what type of data they would need to collect, why, and what they are able to do with it.
Now, developers who aren’t associated with a business will have to upload a copy of their passport or driver’s license in order to gain full access to the Events, Groups, Live Video, Marketing, and Messenger Platform APIs. Without it, they could only get access to some basic login permissions, but were really limited in what they were able to build.
The news may come as too little too late for some developers — as VentureBeat reported back in July, some developers abandoned plans to get access to permissions beyond login because of how long the review process was taking, or out of fear that Facebook could make some more sudden changes as to what type of data they were able to access.
