Re:Thinking About Decentralized Communities
by kodah on Sunday December 13, 2020 @08:45PM
(#25412574)
> The openness of the APIs offers those interested the ability to create their own features on top of a base
The tough thing is that those companies often close or undocument those public APIs because serving you ads is always more profitable than not. Open APIs also encourage aggregating and refinement behavior, which if done outside the parent company would be a detriment to their profits as well.
You're, in essence, asking one of two things:
- Figure out how to monetize APIs
- Change the incentives of the web to be less corporate
The latter would require that the web be significantly cheaper to run. The former would create quite an equal access and innovation problem.
The tough thing is that those companies often close or undocument those public APIs because serving you ads is always more profitable than not. Open APIs also encourage aggregating and refinement behavior, which if done outside the parent company would be a detriment to their profits as well.
You're, in essence, asking one of two things:
- Figure out how to monetize APIs
- Change the incentives of the web to be less corporate
The latter would require that the web be significantly cheaper to run. The former would create quite an equal access and innovation problem.