Back in August, Facebook announced two changes to it’s Platform policy, which come into affect on November 5th 2014. The main change to Facebook Apps is the removal of Like-gating (or Fan-gating). Many apps and fan pages use it to show different content to fans and non-fans, or to hide a specific content (e.g. competitions, voucher codes etc) to non-fans.

On November 5th 2014, Facebook disables the use of Like-gates for applications by preventing applications from knowing if the viewer is a fan of the page. Instead, all viewers will default to “fans” of the page, whether they have Liked the page or not – making it impossible for applications to distinguish between the two using the existing method.

It remains acceptable to incentivise people to login to your app, check in at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s page, but incentivising of Likes is no longer allowed by Facebook.

While no specific action is required to comply with the change, your content may need to be updated address both fans and non-fans in the same way. All applications still using Like-gate functionality will automatically be updated return true when checking if a user likes the page.