[Nextgrid]

We just need to fix the existing laws so they can't be used to stifle interoperability.

As it stands there's nothing technically preventing anyone from reverse-engineering the Facebook client API and making a third-party client. There's going to be a game of cat and mouse (just like with ad blockers) but it is doable.

The problem here is legal. Facebook recently (and wrongly) DMCA'd a GitHub repo of a PHP client for the Instagram API. That was blatant abuse of the DMCA regardless of everything else as all of the code was custom, not infringing on Facebook's copyright. However, even if the DMCA wasn't an issue there's always the risk of a lawsuit like with LinkedIn scraping (that thankfully seems to be going in the scraper's favor) or that App Stores are in bed with the big guys and will not allow a third-party client on the store to begin with.