Facebook supports submitting an application for review that leverages their Messenger Platform, for example see documentation here: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-review/resources/sample-submissions/messenger-platform/.

However, as best I can tell they have dropped support for any application using Messenger Platform. I’m hoping someone can confirm whether this is true. If I had more time I would make this shorter.

Exhibit A: Bug Reporting is Disabled

You cannot submit any bugs for the Messenger Platform. Go to https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/create/ and select your Facebook app then under "Affected Product" select "Messenger Platform", and notice that any sub-choice here shows this message:

We regret that support is unavailable for this product

Advanced technical support via this channel is no longer publically available for this product. Instead, these issues will be supported via the Developer Community Forum. We believe engagement through the community will aid collective understanding of our products and we are continuously improving the experience on the forum. We will also regularly monitor the forum so to support developers on critical issues facing their business.

We apologize for any inconvenience and welcome any feedback or feature requests related to the community forum to make it the most effective channel possible. Thank you!

Exhibit B: Test Users are Disabled

Facebook recommends providing Test Accounts as part of the review process, see:

• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-review/support/faqs/ "How do I include a test user with my submission?"
• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-review/submission-guide/screen-recordings/ "Use Test Users" section
• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-review/submission-guide/#step-2–complete-app-verification "We will test your app using our own test accounts. If you have created specific test users and want us to use them when testing your app, include their credentials in your description. Do not include your personal Facebook account’s credentials."
• https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-review/support/rejection-guides/app-verification/ Most remediation steps say "Create a test user"

And, app reviewers from Facebook reinforce this in their feedback:

• We have had 13 app review rejections since Aug 2023 and every one mentions test users, here are some excerpts:
  • App rejected – Unable to verify use case experience in app, Developer Policy 1.9 – Build a quality product: "2. Provide correct test credentials"
  • App rejected – Invalid or insufficient credentials provided, Developer Policy 1.9 – Build a quality product: "your app’s test credentials did not allow us to fully review the content of the app or there were no test credentials provided for us to use during our review"
  • App rejected – Unable to verify use case experience in app, Developer Policy 1.9 – Build a quality product: "provide us with a working FB account test credential"
  • App rejected – Unable to verify use case experience in app, /etc/resolv.conf: "please provide a Facebook test credentials"
• My Facebook business support message received the recommendation to "provide valid Facebook test credentials"

However, test users cannot be created, see https://developers.facebook.com/docs/development/build-and-test/test-users, which has had this message since at or around Feb 2023:

We are temporarily removing the ability for apps to create new test users. This should not affect existing test users. We will share an update once access to creating new test users has been reinstated.

AND, importantly, fake accounts violate policy, see https://developers.facebook.com/docs/app-review/submission-guide/common-mistakes "You used a fake account" with the recommendation to instead "create a test user".

It seems there is 1 primary bug report for this:

2023-03-15 https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/212115691400384/?comment_id=212244461387507 – Meta says not creating test accounts "is By Design" and to instead "try with app roles" (I assume this means to use fake accounts?)

And, many community threads. I could not find any thread where Meta comments.

• 2023-02-16 https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/595276292037723/ "I can’t create test user for my Facebook app review. Please see image attached"
• 2023-06-01 https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/966675321193314/ "Can I get app reviews without using the test user feature? "
• 2023-06-18 https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/313181594366616/ "Instagram api and test users"
• 2023-08-03 https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/215832727746738/ "I can’t create test users" – Meta said to "create a real Facebook account"

Part of the confusion as well is that Facebook App Review staff appear to (mostly?) be in Philippines which may prevent real user accounts from being logged into (eg. a FB account created in the US will get a "credentials are invalid" error when logging into from Phillipines). I experienced the lockout too by using BrowserStack and switching to Philippines, but I noticed by logging into US then switching to PH using same session I got passed, and then repeated logins from PH worked, but still reviewers report they can’t login. I see https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/215832727746738/ suggests giving reviewers "access credentials for the Gmail account that you used to create the Facebook account as well".

UPDATE 2023-11-02: I got a reply from Meta Support saying to create real accounts (despite this violating their policy, to my understanding):

My next question to them will be: if we provide credentials but the reviewers cannot login due to geo-restriction (or other security lockouts we can’t control), what do we do?

Exhibit C: Reviewers Cannot Receive Messages

There seems to be a primary bug stating that test users cannot receive messages from real apps:

2023-09-25 https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/319543153939123/ "(#-1) Unexpected internal error" – LOTS of discussion about rejections for apps with "pages_messaging"

Then, a large number of threads talking about app review rejections because reviewers cannot receive messages (which has happened to me a dozen times):

• 2023-07-19 https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/1016694099329917/ "App Review is automatically cancelled and is not visible in App Review Request History" – "I was able to resolve this by recreating the App. […] advanced access is granted"
• 2023-07-21 https://www.reddit.com/r/GoogleDataStudio/comments/155kviv/need_help_with_facebook_app_review_stuck_on_fb/ – Login fails due to geo restriction
• 2023-08-11 https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/955061192243332/ "App Review being Canceled for no reason" – "2 months… no approval" and many other similar comments, also Meta quoted "Currently there is an ongoing issue with review submissions, we have already escalated this issue to the higher authorities and they are looking into it."
• 2023-08-11 https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/695331975797388 "App review got canceled on its own" – "cancelled 8 times", closed, can’t comment, can’t open a new ticket
• 2023-08-12 https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/1750674192024001/ "I’m sending the app for review but the request is being canceled automatically after a while and for no reason and also without specifying who canceled it."
• 2023-08-14 https://developers.facebook.com/support/bugs/204161822374947 "App review get cancelled automatically" – "The problem you’re describing here is actually a known issue"
• 2023-10-25 https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/867576231614547/ "How to allow test users to receive replies? Or, how do we get Advanced Access on pages_messaging?"
• 2023-11-01 https://developers.facebook.com/community/threads/1032831874670549/ "App Review keeps failing due to "Invalid or insufficient credentials provided""

My understanding of this bug is that entities in Facebook’s test world (mostly) can’t interact with entities in Facebook’s live world. So, if you want a test user to talk to a test page you need to do so through a test app. However, test apps can’t be logged into due to the error "App not active, This app is not accessible right now…"

So, you have to have real users, real pages, and a real app OR test users, test pages, and a test app. Using real users violates the Facebook terms and cannot be logged into by reviewers because of geo-lockout (or other reason), and test users cannot be created nor can test apps be used.

Conclusion: Kobayashi Maru?

This is a no-win scenario. Test user creation is required but "temporarily disabled" for the last 8 months, you can’t file a bug to get support because Meta has said they no longer support Messenger Platform, Meta isn’t involved in the community queues for related issues, Business support is repeating similar information as reviewers and existing documentation, reviewers are rejecting apps not on the basis of any policy issue but because they can’t login to real user accounts, and reviewers can’t use their own test accounts because of the bug (319543153939123).

Has Facebook dropped support for approving messaging based apps?

I see a few people claiming they have gotten apps approved, but I don’t know if those were because of chance (brute force plus "human error" on the reviewer’s side), or because they were non-messaging based apps, or because they had "Advanced Access" on "pages_messaging" permission granted or overridden by Meta support (see Meta’s comments on 319543153939123 where they manually override the reviewer’s rejection and grant "Advanced Access").

Note: I haven’t mentioned Instagram here because it has additional issues that would make this too lengthy (there is undocumented configuration to get it to work during app review process).

I’ve read through all the bugs, community threads, Stack Overflows, Facebook docs, taking the app review surveys, filing business support bugs, using app review chat support. I would have expected somewhere someone would explain how to work around the 319543153939123 bug or how to provide a real Facebook account, OR someone to say explicitly that all messaging app reviews are on hold.