8/9/2024 UPDATE: Facebook regularly reviews the PostMyParty application for compliance with their terms and policies. They do this by communicating with our team, and logging in and inspecting our application. They most recently did this on August 9th and approved our application stating that they "determined this app meets the requirements of our Platform Terms and Developer Policies".

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Recently we launched a new Chrome extension, which we call the PostMyParty WorkFlow Assistant, as a new solution for you to continue to automate your workflow and post your parties into your groups. As you know, ever since Facebook shut off the events API in 2018, groups have been the most successful place on Facebook to hold your parties.

The release of our new Chrome extension came as quite a shock to the industry (a good one!) because up until that point people were feeling pretty hopeless about being able to continue on with their parties in groups. We literally had people telling us that their businesses were about to be destroyed by Facebook’s change to groups on April 22nd. Basically, no one had even conceived of this as a solution to this problem before, so when we innovated and brought this solution to the market, we got a LOT of attention. We had over 3,000 people register for our announcement webinar, so many that not everyone could even get on the webinar as it overloaded our Zoom account!

And it wasn’t just direct sellers that were shocked. It was also our competitors. In fact, it shocked them so much and was so unexpected that it sent them into a state of panic. You see, since we invested in this new great solution, and they didn’t, they realize that they are about to lose a lot of customers. In fact, we have already seen a huge increase in customers switching from our competitors to PostMyParty.

So what they did was decide to embark on a campaign of fear and lies, to try to convince all the direct sellers in our market that our Chrome extension is “illegal” or “unethical” or “fraudulent” or “hacking” or that you are committing some crime by using our extension, or that it is against Facebook’s policies. And of course, that you should use their software, which won’t even post into groups after today. In other words, using fear to manipulate you into doing their will so that they can make a buck. And, it’s absolutely not the truth. And as you know, companies who lie to their customers don’t tend to survive in the market very long.

And, their campaign of fear was pretty successful as it has temporarily spread and infected many other people. Kind of like a virus in a way if you think about it. But that’s what fear does to those that are susceptible. And you know how fear around a virus has worked for us all, eventually, people wake up to their senses and realize that they were manipulated. And then they lose the trust of those who spread the lies.

So the point of this article is to help you understand how our Workflow Assistant complies with Facebook's terms, and combat the misinformation that has been spread. I know that intro was kind of long but I felt that you need to understand the context of where these fears originated, in case you didn’t know.

Millions Of People Use Chrome Extensions With Facebook

First, understand that millions of people use Chrome extensions on Facebook every single day. Have you, like millions of others, ever used a password manager to log in on Facebook? Like DashLane, or OnePass, or LastPass for example. Millions of people do and what does that extension do? It automatically fills in your username and password and clicks the login button. That’s really similar to what ours does, it fills in your post text and pictures and clicks the post button. Or maybe you have used Grammarly, to correct your text before you make a post? Or maybe you have used Google Translate to translate text on Facebook? Or maybe you have used Boards to copy posts into Facebook? The list goes on and on. There is nothing “illegal” or “unethical” about using Chrome extensions with Facebook. We have received the same permissions as those companies have for our extension to operate on Facebook.

‍How Chrome Extensions Are Approved

Some customers have asked us some interesting questions like “Do you have a legal letter signed by Mark Zuckerberg that shows that Facebook approved your Chrome extension?”

What you need to understand is that Facebook does not ever “approve” Chrome Extensions.

This is simply because Facebook does not own Chrome, Google does. Google is in charge of approving their extensions.

Facebook and Google work together, and Facebook specifically allows Google to approve Chrome extensions to operate on their website.

When we built our extension, we first had to submit it to Google for them to do a detailed review. During that process, we had to specifically request that our extension could operate on Facebook, and when we did this, it sent our extension into an even deeper review with Google. Google literally examined all of the code and functions for our extension, as well as all of our marketing language around the extension. After many rounds of reviews, they approved our extension and our permissions to operate on Facebook.

We are one of the few companies that have been able to receive this level of approval from Google. So I say this so that you understand it is not a simple thing to get a Chrome extension approved like ours. There is a detailed process that goes into it.

And just to reiterate further, Facebook specifically allows Chrome extensions to operate on their site. If they did not want to allow that, they would simply not allow Chrome extensions to operate on their site at all. And once you understand what I stated above, that millions of people use extensions on Facebook every day for many different purposes, you can see why that is.

PostMyParty Complies With All Facebook Terms and Policies.

It’s important to know that our Chrome extension complies with all of Facebook's terms and policies, full stop. Before we even embarked on building this extension, our legal team fully reviewed all of their terms and advised us. As a result, our Chrome extension has been built in a very specific way so as to comply 100% with their terms. Nowhere in Facebook’s policies or terms does it state that you cannot use a Chrome extension to make posts into Facebook’s groups.

Here are what Facebook's terms and policies do say and our explanation of how our competitors are deceiving you about what these terms and policies mean.

In the Meta App Development Terms and Policies, there is a line that states:

“Abide by our Policies and Terms of Service by accessing data only through the Platform APIs”

First, to imply that you, as a customer, are bound by these app developer terms is a lie. You are not an app developer, and you never signed a contract with Facebook to be bound by these terms. These terms are specifically for companies like ours, as we are an app developer.

Second, “accessing data” has a specific legal meaning. And our Chrome extension does not in any way access or collect any of your data on Facebook. Period. To imply that our extension does access or collect data from Facebook is a lie.

We have been a partner with Facebook for many many years and abide by all of Facebook’s terms and policies.

In the Facebook Terms Of Service, there is a section that states:

“You may not access or collect data from our Products using automated means (without our prior permission) or attempt to access data you do not have permission to access.”

Again, as stated above, our extension has been specifically crafted, with guidance from our legal team, to not “access or collect” any data whatsoever from Facebook. There is no piece of data on Facebook that we access. We do not collect any data from Facebook in any way. Regarding the word “automated”, our extension is not automated, which means without user interaction, in other words an automated bot. In our extension, you must specifically configure it yourself. It’s the same as if you hired an assistant to “automatically” post the content you create for you. In fact, it literally does the exact same thing your assistant would do. But regardless of your definition of “automated”, since we do not “access or collect” any data this section does not apply to our Chrome extension and this is an irrelevant point. To imply that our extension violates these terms is a lie.

Finally, in Facebook’s Community Standards there is this line:

“Create or use an account by scripted or other inauthentic means.”

Our extension does not create or use your account by any scripted or inauthentic means. All the content you post is authentically yours and is the same content that you would painstakingly post by hand one at a time. So our extension does not engage in any inauthentic behavior. It only posts specifically what you tell it to post. You manually create and approve all content, we are not inauthentically generating and posting content on your behalf. Our plugin operates directly under your control with your explicit consent. This is no different than some app sending you a push notification and allowing you to copy and paste your content into Facebook. Or using a keyboard app like Boards to do something similar. And, it’s not different than using Facebook’s old API to automate posts into your Facebook. So to imply that you are now suddenly breaking Facebook’s community standards for automating your posting now with a Chrome extension, when you were doing that all along with third-party apps, is a lie.

If you read these Community Standards it is clear that the purpose of these is to keep out “bad actors”. In other words, people doing real harm, like for example bot farms that are creating massive numbers of AI controlled Facebook accounts in order to manipulate US politics and elections or to scam people out of money. This policy is not about cracking down on work-at-home moms and dads trying to make some money to take care of their families by throwing some sales parties.

Our Competitors

I would also like to add that this isn’t the first time our competitors have lied and tried to convince a market that we are “illegal” in some way. When we first launched PostMyParty and invented the concept of the party “template”, it also caused a major upheaval in the market. We won many customers from our competitors and they were hit hard. Our competitors came out at that time and said that templates were “spammy” and violated Facebook's terms and policies. People were scared to use templates at first. But people realized that those were all lies and our company grew very rapidly. And then guess what happened? Our competitors ALL started copying us and creating their own way to bulk or batch schedule posts.

PostMyParty has been the only company to innovate in this market for direct sellers. We did it first with templates, and now with our new WorkFlow Assistant. It won’t be long before everyone realizes that no one is getting banned by Facebook for using our Chrome extension, and the fear subsides and people come to their senses.

Check out this message one of our customers sent us the other day which I think represents what everyone is feeling right now:

Real World Data

If all of that wasn’t enough to convince you, then I’m sure that knowing real data will.

So far, we have already had well over 1000 customers use our extension with thousands of posts, with no issues at all, no accounts getting blocked or bans for using the extension, with some even doing 20 or more parties per week! And if it’s working great for people doing that type of volume it’s going to work great for most of you who are doing just a few parties per week.

Here’s a quote a user left on one of our FB posts a couple of days ago indicating that her posts are even getting more visibility now than before!

Conclusion

We just want to thank all of our customers who have been so supportive of us through this time of chaos, and who have sent us wonderful messages of encouragement. Few greater things can be done than to encourage another person and we deeply appreciate it!

Our goal at PostMyParty has always been to create software that people love to use, that helps them and makes a real difference in their lives. And we are continuing that this year as we launch even more features that will benefit your businesses, like SMS messaging, and landing pages for example.

We look forward to seeing your continued success with your online parties for years to come!

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