Netlog, the Belgium-based social network, finds itself in the bad books of the social media giant Facebook for alleged breach of Facebook’s policies and, consequently, got banned from the Facebook platform last Tuesday, reported Techcrunch.
As a result of the ban, approximately 1.5 million users who had used Facebook Connect to sign up for Netlog were unable to log on to the site. Though not well-known in the United States, Netlog which has been around for nearly a decade, is popular in Europe and the Middle East and claims to have 80 million users. According to Massive Media, parent company of Netlog, they were not provided with specific explanation as to which policy they violated or how.
Initially, Netlog was told that it had violated a new clause in Facebook’s Platform policy which was added around two weeks ago without any fanfare.
On July 27, Facebook added a couple of new terms to its Platform Policies, which developers need to take note of when building apps for the Facebook Platform:
1.10 Application may reward users with virtual currency or virtual goods in exchange for user actions that do not involve third parties, but rewards for user actions that involve third parties must be powered by Facebook Credits by integrating Facebook Credit offers.
This is a step to force Facebook Credits upon application developers who can now no longer provide users with virtual currency for playing a game, participating in a poll or watching a video provided by a third party.
The second one says:
1.11 Apps on Facebook may not integrate, link to, promote, distribute, or redirect to any app on any other competing social platform.”
Facebook is saying that any app that runs on its platform is prohibited from integrating, mentioning or in any way linking to any app on any competing social platform.
Netlog counter-reacted that it had never launched a canvas app on the Facebook Platform, though at one point, it had considered the same.
Later, Facebook confirmed that a mistake had occurred in communicating the reasons for the ban and said that the real reason for the prohibitions was that the Belgian network had taken extensive steps to access internal Facebook APIs and deliberately compromised intended limitations of the platform.
A Facebook spokesperson stated, “We took appropriate and necessary steps to protect people on Facebook.”
Massive Media on its part said that it was not aware of any willful wrongdoing or any intentional unlawful activity and, hence, could not comment on the matter at present. Yet, with regard to Facebook’s earlier allegation that the ban was imposed because Netlog had formed links with a rival social network, Massive Media believes that it should take the matter up with the European Commission on grounds of ‘anti-competitive actions.’
Massive Media SA is a Ghent-based on online media group behind Netlog, Gatcha! and other ventures.
Netlog founded in 2000 by Lorenz Bogaert and Toon Coppens is a social network where members can create their own web page, publish their music playlists, share videos, post blogs and join groups.