Facebook user_groups permission not available for web apps?

3
votes

I've created an app that requires showing the user a list of his groups on Facebook. I'm asking for the user_groups permission and all is working fine in development.

I submitted the app for review in order to make it live and my user_groups permission request was unapproved with the following message:

The user_groups permission is only approved for apps that let people use Facebook on platforms where Facebook is not already available. If you're building an app on Android and iOS, for example, you won't be approved for this permission. Web, Desktop and TV apps will also not be granted this permission.

I just had to make sure I understand: Are no Android, iOS, or Web apps allowed to use this permission?? This sounds strange... Am I missing something?

2
facebookfacebook-graph-apipermissions
Did you find a way to get a list of the user's groups without this permission? - andygeers
(Three years later.) It's a bit ironic that Facebook themselves still have documentation about calling this service via JavaScript, with no warning that "Oh, by the way, you'll never get any results from it." developers.facebook.com/docs/graph-api/reference/v2.10/group/… - Mike Gledhill

2 Answers

2
votes

The answer is already in your question. No Android/iOS, TV App or Web App is allowed to use this permission, because there is a native Facebook client on those platforms (facebook.com counts as Facebook client) so the user can just use groups directly in the native client.

I believe all those group autoposter Apps made them do this. user_groups was mostly used for spamming groups.

1
votes

Check out this relevant article:

http://sendible.com/insights/how-the-new-facebook-api-changes-affect-posting-to-groups/

Although you can't get a list of users groups, you can still post to a group if you have the groupid and publish_actions rights.