Re: Here's hoping
It's worth remembering that FB in 2012 was a very different beast to FB in 2018 (i.e. check the revenue graphs here: https://www.statista.com/statistics/277229/facebooks-annual-revenue-and-net-income/)
I have no doubt FB provided access to a lot of this data as they were actively trying to work out a way of getting revenue from their users over this time period and were a little lax with who they gave access too because it looked like they were going to be the next MySpace.
By the time FB started to work out how to make money from their user base (around 2013-2014), access to a lot of the API's being discussed had been heavily restricted/rate limited or removed entirely. And FB's advertising model is effectively the same model used by YouTube - they rely on users to provide content and sell advertising around that versus the targetted advertising model that they originally favored. A lot of the content is owned by other parties and the value varies significantly with time (i.e. sporting events).
I'm not trying to defend FB's practices - just suggesting they weren't always as healthy as they are now and in that time desperation lead to either making bad decisions or working with third parties that were even less scrupulous.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
