5 ms·

APIs that don't put money on the table are being phased out. Musk did it with twitter and it didn't die (I'm not debating quality/financials). Then reddit did i

by pmdr 2y ago

APIs that don't put money on the table are being phased out. Musk did it with twitter and it didn't die (I'm not debating quality/financials). Then reddit did it (and even blocked VPNs) and it didn't die. Sure, it might've lost some quality, but the stock is up 200% since March. So as long as they're winning, every corp is going to either shut down APIs or absurdly gouge prices. This is the new internet that we've voted for with money and attention.

authorfly 2y ago
Not trying to be "that douchey old times" guy but back in 2005 you could access many APIs for things like weather, temperature, ongoing projects, lists of conference locations, lists of RSS subscriptions, insect population predictions, all sorts. Today they still exist, but with the exception of the most basic and dated corporate free APIs (e.g. reddit) they are gated by API keys and often access limits. It was truly rare to see access limits in 2005; APIs were slow and unreliable but not limited. If anyone documented the loss of APIs (particularly in 2008 IIRC?) I would to read more about it myself too. I think Tom Scott did a video on this, but I can't find it.
- pwdisswordfishz 2y ago
  So it seems old times weren’t that douchey.
- brogrammernot 2y ago
  To recap: - no one locked down APIs - you could access a wide variety of them - no limits on them - they were slow and unreliable As APIs became reliable & fast, they imposed limits on them So not sure what was lost considering it sounds like they didn’t work well and when they did work they were incredibly slow aka self imposed rate limiting
alkonaut 2y ago
Were these APIs just free and open? Open to subscribers or to anyone? Because I'd be happy to pay a bit more to have api access to a service I use, perhaps because I'm using some 3rd party software etc. For example, now I'm using offical apps for Reddit and Twitter, whereas in the past I used great third party apps (Apollo and Tweetbot) which were an order of magnitude better. Sure, they never showed the ads. But just let me pay with money instead of using a shitty app and seeing ads?
- nsteel 2y ago
  Free accounts can access the Spotify API, last time I checked. I've been also thinking this. They should have a tier for users that want to use 3rd-party integrations, and/or a tier for people who want to create such things. Strava could also do something like this. However, both companies have been going the other way and crippling their existing free APIs, and then suffering user backlash. It's almost like it's a bad idea to remove features... Who'd have thought. https://www.reddit.com/r/Strava/comments/1gv4dob/strava_announces_big_changes_thatll_kill_apps/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Strava/comments/1gv4dob/strava_anno...
jpalawaga 2y ago
Twitter closed API access long before musk arrived. It used to be fully open. I think perhaps they were trying to make the API a little less useless, but it would never return to its full glory (maybe for data ingest, but certainly not read). Any platform that relies on serving ads will not have a full-featured API, because it's an obvious way to ignore ads (and maintaining the API costs you money). API isn't free.
- pmdr 2y ago
  > API isn't free. It never has been free, but they string along developers for as long as it's convenient and then turn against them. It's a pretty obvious pattern, yet devs fall for it every time.
Aurornis 2y ago
> So as long as they're winning, every corp is going to either shut down APIs or absurdly gouge prices. This is the new internet that we've voted for with money and attention. I think you’re missing the real cause of this shift: These free APIs existed during the investment-fueled growth phase, then disappeared when they started switching into the real business mode. We had an unusually long period of time where companies could play the startup game of spending money and headcount on things that didn’t generate much or any revenue. Free APIs were an artifact of that. The disappearance of the Twitter and Reddit APIs coincides with them shifting toward profitability. You don’t have to “vote for” anything for this to happen. When it stops being easy to run companies at a loss year over year, the parts of the company that aren’t generating more revenue than they cost either get price increases or dropped entirely. I’ve been at a startup-like company going through this change. It was sad, though not at all surprising, when management started taking inventory of everything people were working on and cross referencing it with how much that was generating in revenue. There were a few moments of internal revelation when someone realized that entire teams of expensive engineers had been working on features and products that either very few people used or that were very complex but generated no revenue. It doesn’t make business sense. The abuse landscape has also changed dramatically. In the early days, free APIs were rarely used features by a few power users. Now, any free API is guaranteed to be abused by some growth hacking startup who wants to vacuum up all of your data and use it for SEO spam, AI training, or other purposes.
- pmdr 2y ago
  > The disappearance of the Twitter and Reddit APIs coincides with them shifting toward profitability. Not just profitability, but more profit. > You don’t have to “vote for” anything for this to happen. No, but once they shut the door on 3rd party apps people still use the services, even if it's a shittier experience. So why wouldn't they restrict or shut down APIs?
- manvillej 2y ago
  This is a standard technology company strategy. Isolate your customers, remove their options, markup the price.
- oloila 2y ago
sebazzz 2y ago
> Musk did it with twitter and it didn't die (I'm not debating quality/financials) Musk did it to decrease transparency, because bot hunting and similar research was enabled by the API.
namaria 2y ago
> gouge prices Price gouging is using price changes to gouge you. The prices could get jacked up, but not gouged.

by pmdr 2y ago

authorfly 2y ago

Not trying to be "that douchey old times" guy but back in 2005 you could access many APIs for things like weather, temperature, ongoing projects, lists of conference locations, lists of RSS subscriptions, insect population predictions, all sorts. Today they still exist, but with the exception of the most basic and dated corporate free APIs (e.g. reddit) they are gated by API keys and often access limits. It was truly rare to see access limits in 2005; APIs were slow and unreliable but not limited. If anyone documented the loss of APIs (particularly in 2008 IIRC?) I would to read more about it myself too. I think Tom Scott did a video on this, but I can't find it.

pwdisswordfishz 2y ago
So it seems old times weren’t that douchey.
brogrammernot 2y ago
To recap: - no one locked down APIs - you could access a wide variety of them - no limits on them - they were slow and unreliable As APIs became reliable & fast, they imposed limits on them So not sure what was lost considering it sounds like they didn’t work well and when they did work they were incredibly slow aka self imposed rate limiting

alkonaut 2y ago

Were these APIs just free and open? Open to subscribers or to anyone? Because I'd be happy to pay a bit more to have api access to a service I use, perhaps because I'm using some 3rd party software etc. For example, now I'm using offical apps for Reddit and Twitter, whereas in the past I used great third party apps (Apollo and Tweetbot) which were an order of magnitude better. Sure, they never showed the ads. But just let me pay with money instead of using a shitty app and seeing ads?

nsteel 2y ago
Free accounts can access the Spotify API, last time I checked. I've been also thinking this. They should have a tier for users that want to use 3rd-party integrations, and/or a tier for people who want to create such things. Strava could also do something like this. However, both companies have been going the other way and crippling their existing free APIs, and then suffering user backlash. It's almost like it's a bad idea to remove features... Who'd have thought. https://www.reddit.com/r/Strava/comments/1gv4dob/strava_announces_big_changes_thatll_kill_apps/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Strava/comments/1gv4dob/strava_anno...

jpalawaga 2y ago

Twitter closed API access long before musk arrived. It used to be fully open. I think perhaps they were trying to make the API a little less useless, but it would never return to its full glory (maybe for data ingest, but certainly not read). Any platform that relies on serving ads will not have a full-featured API, because it's an obvious way to ignore ads (and maintaining the API costs you money). API isn't free.

pmdr 2y ago
> API isn't free. It never has been free, but they string along developers for as long as it's convenient and then turn against them. It's a pretty obvious pattern, yet devs fall for it every time.

Aurornis 2y ago

> So as long as they're winning, every corp is going to either shut down APIs or absurdly gouge prices. This is the new internet that we've voted for with money and attention. I think you’re missing the real cause of this shift: These free APIs existed during the investment-fueled growth phase, then disappeared when they started switching into the real business mode. We had an unusually long period of time where companies could play the startup game of spending money and headcount on things that didn’t generate much or any revenue. Free APIs were an artifact of that. The disappearance of the Twitter and Reddit APIs coincides with them shifting toward profitability. You don’t have to “vote for” anything for this to happen. When it stops being easy to run companies at a loss year over year, the parts of the company that aren’t generating more revenue than they cost either get price increases or dropped entirely. I’ve been at a startup-like company going through this change. It was sad, though not at all surprising, when management started taking inventory of everything people were working on and cross referencing it with how much that was generating in revenue. There were a few moments of internal revelation when someone realized that entire teams of expensive engineers had been working on features and products that either very few people used or that were very complex but generated no revenue. It doesn’t make business sense. The abuse landscape has also changed dramatically. In the early days, free APIs were rarely used features by a few power users. Now, any free API is guaranteed to be abused by some growth hacking startup who wants to vacuum up all of your data and use it for SEO spam, AI training, or other purposes.

pmdr 2y ago
> The disappearance of the Twitter and Reddit APIs coincides with them shifting toward profitability. Not just profitability, but more profit. > You don’t have to “vote for” anything for this to happen. No, but once they shut the door on 3rd party apps people still use the services, even if it's a shittier experience. So why wouldn't they restrict or shut down APIs?
manvillej 2y ago
This is a standard technology company strategy. Isolate your customers, remove their options, markup the price.
oloila 2y ago

sebazzz 2y ago

> Musk did it with twitter and it didn't die (I'm not debating quality/financials) Musk did it to decrease transparency, because bot hunting and similar research was enabled by the API.

namaria 2y ago

> gouge prices Price gouging is using price changes to gouge you. The prices could get jacked up, but not gouged.