I’m really not in favour of boards and exceptions. If there was a provision for different categories of apps to be able to use the API in different ways, then that might work. But boards and exceptions really aren’t scalable solutions.

The root cause of this problem is that requests for users to take action that originate from within the app and requests for users to install the app are indistinguishable. If there was a distinction between these two categories invitation, then that might go part way to resolving the issue.

I also think that the measure of allowing users to more easily block apps that they don’t want to hear from (already implemented) will likely cure the worst of the spammy apps.

re: notifications and requests coming from FCC, we’ve never been able to invite large numbers of people to a call. We worked around the restriction by allowing people to invite members of a group, and then we encouraged people who WANT notifications to sign up for the group. Heaven help us if the calls ever become super popular, though, because then we’ll run into the restriction that prevents you from sending email to groups that are larger than 1,000 people. The only time I ever invite a specific individual to a Squawk Box is when I feel that that individual might have a valuale contribution to make. I simply can’t afford to “waste” a real invitation on someone who might not show up.

So they could set up a board of exceptions, and then people could apply for one. The board could review the app, and judge if it obviously should have a higher limit. Or it could judge it does not get a higher limit but was a reasonable request. Or it could judge that the application clearly didn’t understand the rules and in that case give it a _lower_ limit to avoid having everybody submit their app for an exception.

Another option would be to let users do a “forceful reject” of a feed item or notification, and punt those apps (even if facebook written) to a lower quota. So just ignoring hurts your quota only a little, while saying “go away” hurts it a lot.

(Of course this could cause app wars, as developers of one app deliberately use and reject its notifications. You could also punish users who get forceful rejections, though people would just create bogus accounts for this)

But I am not sure you are that special, because notifications are a big thing, they get emailed to me.

So for example it is appropriate to notify me if I am invited to a conference call for work etc. But if it’s just a “hey, you might find this cool” then it should not be a notification. If it’s a “We’re doing a demo call to promote our app” it should not be.

If you’re inviting lots of people to squawk boxes who are ignoring it, you should indeed be cutting back, for example.