Facebook API 2.3's new publish_pages permission - do I need it?

Question

I'm quite confused about Facebook's new publish_pages permission.

My Facebook app allows our CMS users to post to their Facebook pages via our CMS, posing as the page. We have been granted (via the login review process) the manage_pages and publish_actions permissions.

The API change log states this:

publish_pages Permission - This new permission is required to publish as a Page. Previously publish_actions was required. People who granted manage_pages and publish_actions before v2.3 have automatically been granted publish_pages. If anyone logs in via v2.3, you'll need to request publish_pages explicitly in addition to manage_pages.

We have not been granted the publish_pages permission automatically.

The blog post here states:

For Page developers, we've added the ability to deliver more content on a Page via real-time updates (RTUs). A new Login permission, publish_pages , is now required for apps to publish on behalf of Pages; previously, this required publish_actions.

So it sounds to me like if we upgrade to use API 2.3, our service will no longer work, because we haven't been granted publish_pages.

The documentation states this:

A user access token with publish_actions permission can be used to publish new posts on behalf of that person. Posts will appear in the voice of the user.

A page access token with publish_pages permission can be used to publish new posts on behalf of that page. Posts will appear in the voice of the page.

We do want to post in the voice of the page, as we do currently.

Therefore I opened a new login review request and summarised all of the above, quoting their changelog. Facebook's response was this:

You don't need the publish_pages permission because you already have the publish_actions and manage_pages permissions granted. Publish_pages is a new feature that allows an app to publish to a managed Facebook fan page, but your previously granted permissions contain this functionality already.

Is it just me, or does that response conflict with everything else they've written?

So my question is simply, do we need this new permission going forward or not, and have they wrongly not automatically granted it to us?

Answer 1

Well apparently Facebook's supports response is in some manner wrong.

If you want to post on Page on behalf of the user manage_pages and publish_actions publish permissions are passable for post action.

If you want to post on behalf of the page you also need publish_pages permission, without this all v2.3 api calls will return OAuth Error. There might be other privileges for managing your pages under this permission i don't know