What’s New with Facebook Graph API 9.0?

On November 10th, 2020 Facebook released version 9.0 of their Graph API. Major releases are typically important to pay attention to since they can have new features, major bug fixes, or breaking changes.

There are two major changes with Facebook Graph API 9.0:

• Starting on the release date of Nov 10th, consumer and gaming apps that have not been approved yet or are switching from development to live mode must make it possible for their users to delete their data. You can either use the callback or provide a URL with instructions on how to delete the data. While this is important for user privacy and security, it is an extra step to do before making your app live.
• If you use Lead Ads form data, you now must be approved for new permissions: leads_retrieval for business apps and leads_retrieval for non-business apps. If you don’t use v9.0, you have until Feb 21st, 2021 to get be approved or you lose access.

In addition, there are a few policy changes to note:

• Facebook Live Policies: “Pre-recorded and looping Live videos are now prohibited from both the Live API and Core Live. Broadcasts via the Live API or core Live must not contain looping content (videos, static images, or poll-only videos) and any pre-recorded content must be clearly labeled.” This has been added to protect people from false content.
• Facebook Crawler: Facebook will crawl your privacy policy URL, or other URLs you’ve given Facebook, to verify it is accessible.
• Developer Policies.: You are now prohibited from creating user profiles utilizing data requested via Instant Games. Furthermore,  you are prohibit an Instant Game from independently requesting any personal or sensitive data from people in your Instant Game.
• Bot Policies: Automated bots are now required to “inform users that they’re interacting with an automated experience. This update is particularly relevant to bots that serve the German market and German users.”

There also are a few updates to Instagram APIs:

• follower_count metric: track you user performance. Important to note is your reported user count might decrease. Facebook says: “[you] may notice a one-time decrease in their follower count shown via API, as it more closely aligns with the follower count shown in the native app.”
• Enhancement to Instagram Ads API: A lot of changes have been made, including the ability to “take existing organic Instagram posts and promote them as ads”.

Finally, if you’re using older versions of the Facebook Graph API, some will be deprecated in coming months:

• February 8, 2021 – v6.0 of the Marketing API will no longer be available.
• March 3, 2021 – v7.0 of the Marketing API will no longer be available.
• May 4th, 2021 – v3.2 of the Graph API will no longer be available.