App Engine ([appname].appspot.com) blacklisted by Facebook?

[Rasmus Vernhamn]

Have anyone else experienced this issue of their domain being blacklisted by Facebook (I'm thinking maybe all .appspots-domains might be subject to this)? 

I'm currently using facebook's 'Social Plugin - Comments' for my page. It appears to be working when it in fact does not. Whenever I (or someone else) choose to publish the comment to facebook, I get an asked to confirm that I really wanna publish the comment. I've googled a lot, and the most likely reason seems to be that your domain (in this case .appspot.com) has been blacklisted by facebook. This wouldn't normally be a problem since I can "force" post it by explicitly confirming that I wanna post the comment to facebook. BUT...

On a mobile browser however, one doesn't get the option to confirm to publish to facebook, which results in a hidden failure to post to facebook. BUT...

With the release of the new Comment-system (Facebook API v2.3), the confirmation has now disappeared (almost thought it was working), but it doesn't. Now they have simply hidden confirmation which causes comments to never get posted to facebook.

I've tried the exact same code on an App Engine-domain (.appspot.com) and my own domain (myowndomain.com (no subdomain involved)), this works on my own domain, but not on the App Engine-domain!

[Kaan Soral]

I will check it out too, tomorrow, but it seems like normal behaviour to me

[Rasmus Vernhamn]

Great that you will check it out (please tell me how it went)! What do you mean by "seems like normal behaviour"? Do you mean that you think it works for you, or that the scenario I explained above is normal? If it's the latter, that behaviour is far from normal!

[Kaan Soral]

Creating a Facebook App and using the canvas url for comments is probably your best option

[Rasmus Vernhamn]

How does this answer anything at all?

[Kaan Soral]

Well the second issue seems like a Facebook bug, the first one seems like a pre-judgement/soft-blacklist instead, if it was blacklisted, you wouldn't be able to comment at all

I realised that I was using the canvas url's for comments, so I can't easily test the issue without creating a minimal FB environment at an .appspot.com, and I'm currently pre-occupied to do so

It also makes sense to not use the .appspot.com url's for user facing stuff

This is my .02, I'm afraid I won't be able to help you further

[Rasmus Vernhamn]

Thank you for your continued input on this matter. If it's a "pre-judgement/soft-blacklist" then that should apply to all .appspot.com domains (which is why I worry this might cause problems for more then me) since the domain I use was recently created and it's not like I spammed facebook or anything. 

Okay!

I agree that it's not optimal to have an appspot domain for user related stuff! But one would think it should still work.

[Kaan Soral]

Facebook has a lot of black box behaviour like the issue you're experiencing, so like I suggested, using a custom domain or creating a canvas app / using the canvas url with a redirect etc. are valid solutions

You can also create a new appengine app and test the .appspot.com soft-blacklist theory, I intended to test it myself at one point, but it seems like too much effort right now

It's also possible that the black-box system might mistake your testing for user behaviour, and they easily act on the user behaviours, but in any case, not using the .appspot.com url is a good idea

That url is also visible at user profiles and it's unprofessional anyway

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Off topic, I switched to the new comment UI, I hope their algorithm is also improved on this new UI/plugin, the old version used to get stuck, one comment becomes popular and stays at the top for years

[Rasmus Vernhamn]

Sorry for going off-topic and making this a "facebook"-thread. 

May I ask how you are using the Canvas URL successfully? I tried setting up a new Facebook App and input my appspot url in the Secure Canvas URL field and using the facebook-url as my data-href, but I still get the same problem. Are you using the "generated" facebook-url as your data-href param in the comment-plugin or the appspot.com url? If you don't mind, can you link to your page so i can browse the source?

Thank you!

[Kaan Soral]

It's a good idea to at open graph parameters to the comment page, especially og:url and also parse it with: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/

What I naturally do is: Use the https://apps.facebook.com/canvas_name/url as the href parameter, as it's already a facebook app

You can use this, and redirect the user with JS - if it's needed etc.

I tested my canvas url, that wraps the .appspot.com url, there were no comment issues

I didn't think of it, but the debugger might even tell you if the url is blacklisted: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/