Is Facebook putting some of its applications on double secret probation?

The social-networking site suspended several apps Friday night, saying in its emails to the respective developers, “Your application contains ads that link to landing pages completely unrelated to the content in the ad and thus are misleading.” Among those affected were FamilyLink’s We’re Related, which has 20.4 million monthly active users, and Familybuilder’s Family Tree, which has 5.3 million, according to Inside Facebook.

Familybuilder CEO Ilya Nikolayev told Inside Facebook the company received no warning before Family Tree was suspended, adding that the ad in question was traced to one ad network and to users in Canada, and saying the company would have turned off all of its ads in order to find the objectionable one, but it was never given the chance.

Inside Facebook also pointed to a post by Paul Jeffries, head of Facebook’s Platform Policy team, on the social-networking site’s Developer Forums, outlining its policies.