Tell HN: Meta developer account suspended

Remember that Whatsapp belongs to Mark Zuckerburg, not you, the users, or the developers. They can ban anyone for any reason at any time, and it does not need to be a good reason. There is no appeals court for corpotech.

This is a great lesson on the fragility of building businesses on private, centralized, and proprietary platforms.

It is a lesson I wish I learned a lot earlier in my career.

My advice is to build such solutions around open products like Signal, XMPP or Matrix if possible. Or even Telegram.

On top of providing a better developer experience compared to Meta's ultra-locked and limited APIs, they aren't subject to the whims of a giant faceless company that can kill your product for no apparent reason with no chances of appeal.

Especially if you're doing these projects for folks in the developing world. Let's not lock them in proprietary American spyware like the whole West has already done :) from a user's perspective, if things are done properly, it'll just be a matter of installing another app.

And btw using a Matrix server with a WhatsApp bridge could also be a temporary solution to bypass the ban. But I haven't tested it with business accounts.

i have faced the same issue severally, opening different accounts that get suspended immediately with no activity and no clear reason of suspension. Very draining.

Understand the feeling of being rug pulled. But you built something in another person’s walled garden, gotta be prepared to get kicked out anytime.

Perhaps channel your energy to building something else more stable, and stop adding value to Meta (because they really dgaf about you)

Thanks for what?

This is the way of the world. Unaccountable mega-corporations, the feudal lords of the modern world.