There was a hidden gem in this week’s Facebook Platform update push: 3 new API calls to handle application moderation.

This has been a long requested feature with the initial enhancement filed back in October 2007. Even after the push, the new feature went largely unnoticed until it was mentioned by a Platform Team Member in this thread. Nonetheless, here are the API calls which were added:

• Admin.banUsers – Prevents users from accessing an application’s canvas page and forums.
• Admin.unbanUsers – Unbans a list of users previously banned using admin.banUsers.
• Admin.getBannedUsers – Returns a list of users who were banned by an application using admin.banUsers.

For the time being this new feature does not have a graphical user interface; all actions must be done via the Facebook API. Also worth noting is that this feature is only useful to developers wishing to ban users by their Facebook ID — you’ll need to implement your own solution using iFrames if you’d like to ban users by IP address.