Last night, only hours after the launch of the new social video service Vine, Facebook promptly removed the ability to add Facebook friends via the app. The move came off as a bit--well, harsh. But as social media companies continue to jab each other with API restrictions, it doesn't show any signs of changing.

Writing on the Facebook Developer Blog, Platform Partnerships and Operations director Justin Osofsky responded in a somewhat passive-aggresive manner to the controversy. According to Osofsky, the "vast majority" of social app and game developers should "keep doing what you're doing." 

"Our goal is to provide a platform that gives people an easy way to login to your apps, create personalized and social experiences, and easily share what they’re doing in your apps with people on Facebook," writes Osofsky.

But lest we think it's all communal sharing and blue skies, Facebook would like to reiterate is platform policies.

"For a much smaller number of apps that are using Facebook to either replicate our functionality or bootstrap their growth in a way that creates little value for people on Facebook, such as not providing users an easy way to share back to Facebook," adds Osofsky. "We’ve had policies against this that we are further clarifying today."

The language being referenced is Facebook's Platform Policies, last revised on January 25, 2012. Section 1.10 (noted by Osofsky in the post) states, in part:

"If you use any Facebook APIs to build personalized or social experiences, you must also enable people to easily share their experiences back with people on Facebook […] Replicating core functionality: You may not use Facebook Platform to promote, or to export user data to, a product or service that replicates a core Facebook product or service without our permission."

While there's easily an argument Vine allows users to share their experiences back to Facebook, it only does so via an image and link. When you share a looping vid with your timeline, your friends will have to click the link and transfer to Vine's site.

But if Osofsky is referencing Vine's ability to populate friends via Facebook, the policy seems a bit strange. After all, a number of games and apps already use Facebook to add friends. Frankly, it's hard not to chalk this all up to two more social media companies poking one another (pun intended).

Follow this article's author, Matt Clark, on Twitter.