This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.
Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.
Rules:
1: All Lemmy rules apply
2: Do not post low effort posts
3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff
4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.
5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)
6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist
7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed
*I don’t mind a site charging a nominal fee for API access. Either to cover the cost of API service itself, or more importantly to encourage API developers to be efficient when making API requests. But that's hundreds to thousands of dollars a year, not millions.
Important caveat about the title from the article.
Is there a reasonable model for commercial sites to survive if their APIs are free?
The obvious answer is "charge a reasonable price".
Many services like AccuWeather do that, including having a limited free tier for experimentation or niche applications.
The real problem though is that the value of the data isn't just the cost of storing and making it available - in many cases its strategic. This is why e.g. the Google Maps API gives you pre-rendered map tiles and curated results, but you don't get access to the raw data.
I think that's reasonable, which is why I'm wondering how "all APIs must be free" works.
Ads, like Reddit does and reddit makes a ton of money. If they weren't trying to make nft integrations or new TikTok and just had the staff it took to keep the lights on, it would be a stable successful business.
But the greedy execs want more money so they act like they have no choice but to squeeze the users for everything they can. This is their choice, not a necessity.
Exactly this. They keep repeating that they aren't profitable. But the key question is: why do they need 2,000 employees? IIRC, before they were acquired by Facebook, Whatsapp managed to handle a billion+ users with 50 people.
If I write a third party app, then I can filter out any ads you pass me, or I can make it easy for a user to do at arm's length from me by allowing plugins. This is exactly what's happening with reddit third party apps.
I don't think it's as black and white as you're making out.
Well if you violate TOS then your API key gets revoked. If apps want access then they can play by the rules; I think that’s fair enough.
Now, what’s fair when it comes to ad placement is a whole other can of worms…