Facebook, it seems has had a major change of heart about posting everything from your news feed publically, but even more interesting is that it's discouraging developers from sending updates automatically too.
This included services like Spotify the like, which, if allowed, will post every song you listen to and allow you to share them with friends. For some, this feature is great and allows them to get recommendations from their friends about what to listen to. For the rest of us, it's a total bore and something that makes us groan with rage.
The change has come, apparently, from its users marking a high percentage of these posts as spam. Which obviously has some sort of processing cost for the firm, but also shows up as a flag that needs to be looked into.
The core of auto-posting was tied into Open Graph, which used this information, along with other things to build a valuable database of user information. Open Graph is remarkable, but also allows you to search for users on the service who, say, meet certain criteria. It's been critisised for that, because you can search for "married men, who I know, who use Tinder" or similar.
However you look at it, fewer posts in the Facebook timeline will improve the quality of service, and ultimately bring users back to the service.
Via: The Verge