I'd go a step further: APIs shouldn't exist. I know, it's a hilarious sentiment in these times. But I really feel that most of the problems today around walled

I'd go a step further: APIs shouldn't exist. I know, it's a hilarious sentiment in these times. But I really feel that most of the problems today around walled gardens and surveillance capitalism stem from not using the web directly as it was originally envisioned. If we had properly formatted HTML, little/no Javascript, a standard auth mechanism that isn't terrible (HTTP auth or a cookie like the good 'ol days), automatic sitemaps or semantic representations without manual intervention, best practices around site updates and maintaining previous versions, etc etc, then why would we need an API? Since that stuff will never happen, I'd vote for third parties to provide open source APIs for existing sites. Companies could even hire those third parties to maintain APIs for them. Disclaimer: I'm paid to write APIs and I'm just so tired.