Facebook finally doing something against forced invites

As a developer, if there’s something I hate in Facebook, it is all these “What the ____ are you?” or “What’s your ____ personality?” applications that force people to spam their friends before showing them the results. These applications have rapid growth from day one and monopolize the most active application directory listings while bringing zero value except user fatigue against applications and invites. This is not what Facebook applications should be like.

Last week, I was at the FacebookCampToronto3 event and Dave Morin, Facebook’s senior platform manager was a guest speaker. After his presentation, I got to ask the first question and I asked him if they are going to do something against forced invites. He answered that they were always looking to improve the experience for the users and that they do not like forced invites neither.

Our wish may soon be granted as it seems Facebook is finally doing something against forced invites!

The platform policy page has been updated. Now as per their policy, an application cannot:

Present a user with a subsequent friend invite page if the user has already clicked a Facebook-rendered Skip, Cancel, or Skip This Step button, unless the user explicitly selects to invite friends from a page that offers more than just the friend invite option. If the application presents the user with a friend invite page that does not include a Facebook-rendered Skip, Cancel, or Skip This Step button, the application must offer some navigation option to leave the friend invite process, and the application must not present the user with a subsequent friend invite page unless the user explicitly selects to invite friends from a page that offers more than that single option.

More information is available here:

Facebook bans ‘forced invites’ in apps

Forced Invites Get Shutdown