Facebook’s New App Verification Program Offers Protection — for a Price
Facebook has rolled out a new application vetting program designed to help you navigate through the sea of available apps to find trustworthy options. Unfortunately the program bears a striking resemblance to basic, mob-style extortion schemes and might leave you wondering why it’s necessary.
In theory the new verification program will help you decided which Facebook apps to trust — a new “verified app” badge will appear next to any applications that pass muster. But by attaching a developer fee of $375 to the badge, the Facebook app verification program looks a bit like what Techcrunch calls a Godfather-style Protection Racket.
To be fair, Facebook will no doubt be incurring some costs with the new verification program, and there are hosts of other programs that work in a similar manner (those VeriSign badges that are supposed to make you feel more secure? Yeah, those come for a fee).
Still, we can’t help wondering why the verification program is necessary. In other words, why is Facebook letting in untrustworthy apps in the first place? The answer seems to be that Facebook simply lacks a gatekeeper, and the new program is designed to fill that gap and perhaps make a bit of money in the process.
Facebook’s criteria for verified apps call for developers to create applications that are “respectful, transparent and meet the guiding principles for trustworthiness.”
Here’s how Facebook breaks down those nebulous terms:
- Respectful: Values user attention and honors their intentions in communications and actions.
- Transparent: Explains how features will work and how they won’t work, especially in triggering user-to-user communications
If an app meets those criteria, then developers can pay $375 per year for Facebook’s blessing (so far as we can tell you do not need to kiss Mark Zuckerburg’s ring).
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