The 10 Most Popular Apps Blocked By Facebook

Image via Complex Original

Date: Jan. 15, 2010

Blocked for: Violating developer agreement

Those who were self-conscious about being unfriended had the perfect companion app at one point. Defriended allowed FB users to monitor which so-called friends stopped following them by scanning their profile pages for update changes. That was until the 99-cent iOS program was removed from the Apple App Store and blocked from the social network for being noncompliant with “Facebook Platform policies.”

Date: May 8, 2010

Blocked for: Copyright infringement

Grooveshark has dealt with its fair share of legal woes (and bans) throughout the past several years for copyright usage. That was the same card Facebook pulled when it made the call to ban the online music streaming service on the eve of its IPO announcement. Coincidence? Think not.

Date: Feb. 23, 2011

Blocked for: Being too popular

After securing over 100,00 users within a 24-hour time span, the relationship status tracker was removed for its mass popularity, enraging stalkers and jilted lovers across the net. The reason given to creator Dan Loewenherz : “If an application is making an inordinate number of stream, publish calls and receiving a large number of user reports, it may be removed by our automated systems to protect the user experience and the Platform ecosystem.” That's a tough breakup to get over.

Date: Jan. 18, 2013

Blocked for: Competitive concerns

Viewed as a serious threat to its social graph feature, Facebook dropped the hammer on the mobile communications service due to “possible violations” of its terms of service. At least that's what CEO Tom Katis was told in an email, according to AllThingsD. The voice-messaging app let users communicate with each other through PTT functionality and provided access to discover FB friends.

Date: Jan. 24, 2013

Blocked for: Data access and competitive concerns

Facebook knocked the social discovery app’s hustle by denying access to its API data within the first four hours of its iOS launch. Wonder was initially created to unify info from popular social media outlets, standing out as a major Graph Search competitor. Developer Yandex stated the reason behind the ban was due to Facebook mistaking the app for a search engine, even though it’s identified as the most popular search engine in Russia. Didn't help matters at all.

Date: Jan. 25, 2013

Blocked for: Competitive concerns and replicated functionality

Twitter’s new video-capture app has become the hottest thing out since Instragram. So it was only a matter of time before an attempt was made to try and stop its momentum. Facebook's way of doing so was by blocking Vine’s friend-finding option. The company cited its reason via its developer blog: ”Apps that are using Facebook to either replicate our functionality or bootstrap their growth in a way that creates little value for people on Facebook, such as not providing users an easy way to share back to Facebook.” Would someone mind telling us what replicated feature this is?

Date: Feb. 25, 2013

Blocked for: Negative feedback

The way Facebook views it, there should only be one photo-sharing service that supports its platform—that being its own subsidiary, Instagram. French creator Presselite thought it could get away with its own retro-inspired, filter-heavy photo app, but was restricted from allowing users to upload photos onto their FB profile pages. Negative feedback was the excuse used with Facebook noting Vintage Camera had one negative report for every 1,000 images uploaded.

Date: March 15, 2013

Blocked for: Duplicating services

They say if you can’t beat the competition, buy it. And if it isn’t for sale, then just ban it from your service. MessageMe creators read between the lines after passing on an undisclosed offer, which many experts believe encouraged Facebook to cut the free mobile messenger from the social network for offering similar services. Facebook Messenger being the most obvious. It would also block the app’s Find Friends function. 

Date: May 6, 2013

Blocked for: Privacy concerns

Guilty of spamming user’s contacts with invites, Facebook revoked the messaging/photo-sharing app’s API access. The move was considered a security measure, though it prevented Path users from sending invitations and shut off its Find Friends feature. Hearsay has it that Facebook was feeling the pressure from Path’s on-growing community and move into private messaging.

Date: May 14, 2013

Blocked for: Violating platform policies

Deleting your Facebook profile has probably crossed your mind at one point or another. Co-founder Kyle McDonald decided to make a game out of the whole notion by granting users the opportunity to gamble the fate of their pages with Social Roulette. The program gave users a 1/6 chance of being removed from the social network. Unfortunately, the thrill was short-lived as Facebook banned it before the site saw a noticeable decrease in users.