Why are some friends' likes unavailable through the Graph API or FQL?

Question

I have some friends whose likes I can see if I look at their timelines.

However, I can't access those likes using the Graph API. I'm returned an empty set when I run:

https://graph.facebook.com/DAT_USER_ID/likes?access_token=DAT_ACCESS_TOKEN

or

https://graph.facebook.com/fql?q=SELECT url FROM url_like WHERE user_id=DAT_USER_ID&access_token=DAT_ACCESS_TOKEN

I do have the friends_likes permission granted.

I created a Facebook bug report here: http://developers.facebook.com/bugs/112253515590244?browse=search_50367fda9e6d48337036107

Fromm

Answer 1

In addition to your friends' privacy settings for their Likes, there's another privacy setting which dictates how apps you use can access their data.

Generally an app you authorise to connect to your account is able to see anything you can, you're effectively delegating the level of access you have to your data and your friends' data to the app.

There's a privacy setting which overrides this though, it's under Privacy Settings -> Ads, Apps & Websites, and is called 'How people bring your info to apps they use'. This allows a user to specify certain categories of information they do NOT want to be made available to apps being used by a friend, even if that friend can access the information normally via Facebook.com

It currently looks like this

There's more information about this (written for a user audience, not a developer audience) on Facebook's Privacy information site

Diagram

This is correct, with a caveat. Apart from unticking the correct box, I had to remove the Graph Api Explorer app for user B so that his likes were invisible to user A (under the same app, of course). – Fromm

Yes, I think this primarily refers to apps that your friend doesn't also use, if your friend actually uses the app themselves, the app can already act on that friend's behalf which would override this setting – Diagram