Facebook says it has suspended 400+ apps since launching investigation into app data use, including myPersonality, which may have misused data of 4M+ users
Today we banned myPersonality — an app that was mainly active prior to 2012 — from Facebook for failing to agree to our request …
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second checkpoint in the audit Facebook committed to after pledging in March 2018 to review every app with extended data access from 2014 and earlier — a sweep that had already produced roughly 200 suspensions by mid-May. The myPersonality ban is the highest-profile enforcement action since, and it lands on an app already under scrutiny: a New Scientist investigation found quiz data was shared with researchers over an insecure site, leaving millions of users' details exposed for years.
The scale matters because it shows the investigation moving from triage to permanent culling — a trajectory that ends, per later reporting, with tens of thousands of apps removed from about 400 developers.
First-order effects
- myPersonality is banned outright for refusing to cooperate with Facebook's audit or submit to inspection, and its 4M+ users learn their data may have been misused.
- Hundreds of other suspended developers lose platform access mid-investigation, with Facebook signaling that non-cooperation itself is now grounds for removal.
Second-order effects
- Quiz and personality-app developers face a shrinking business: Facebook's follow-on policy bars minimal-utility apps entirely and expires permissions unused for 90 days, converting a one-time purge into ongoing attrition.
- Legitimate app makers absorb higher compliance costs as audits become a standing condition of platform access rather than a one-off scandal response.
Third-order effects
- Facebook is rebuilding its developer platform around active-use gating and utility thresholds, shifting the permission boundary from 'user consented once' to 'app must continuously justify access' — a model other platforms facing similar scrutiny can copy.
- If enforcement keeps scaling at this pace, the long tail of third-party data-harvesting apps gets structurally priced out of social platforms, concentrating distribution in vetted partners.
The trend: Post-Cambridge Analytica, social platforms are replacing passive user-consent models with continuous developer auditing and permission expiry as the primary control on third-party data access.