Explore social growth
How native service ordering works, what a partial delivery means, and the line between legitimate use and misuse.
What this product does
A catalogue of actions a service performs against a target, with a quantity and service-specific fields.
Each service in this catalogue does one thing: it performs a defined action a defined number of times against a target you supply. Some act on a link. Some act on a username. Some act on a hashtag. Some post a fixed set of comments. The service defines which, and the order form is built from that definition.
That is why the ordering experience is a typed form, not a quantity box. A package has no quantity because the service fixes it. A subscription has a minimum, a maximum, a post count, a delay and an expiry, and it cannot be expressed as a single line. Treating them all as one form would produce orders the service cannot run.
- Price basis
- Every service publishes the basis its rate applies to. The basis is shown, never inferred from the number.
- Quantity limits
- A minimum and a maximum exist per service. A request outside them is refused before it is sent.
- Per-service controls
- Refill and cancellation are properties of the service. Where they are unsupported, the control is absent.
Partial delivery, explained properly
The most common misunderstanding in this category.
A service order that reports a remaining count has not necessarily failed. It means the service performed part of the work and stopped. The remaining count is the quantity it did not perform. The order is charged for the delivered part, and it is shown as partial, with the remaining quantity visible.
What is not acceptable is a batch that reports one summary number and hides the breakdown. A batch result here is always reported per line, so you can see which lines completed, which lines are still running, and which lines are partial. A single total tells you nothing you can act on.
Using this lawfully
The rules are not technicalities.
Do not
- Mislead people about authenticityPresenting automated activity as something other than what it is, particularly where identity or origin is implied.
- Impersonate a person or organisationUsing an account that belongs to someone else, or presenting your activity as theirs.
- Deceive people about your identityMisleading anyone about who is behind an account or a service, including yourself.
Do
- Understand the targetCheck that a service supports the target before you order. A service that cannot act on it will not complete.
- Keep the recordKeep the order reference, the service and the date. It is what makes a support request answerable.
- Use a separate identity for the activityIf the service acts on a target, that target should be one you are entitled to act on.
Buying a service does not grant permission to violate the rules of the platform it acts on, and it does not make a deceptive use lawful. The acceptable use rules and responsible growth guidance apply to every order, and enforcement can suspend the account that placed it.