Its been some time since xitter, reddit, and other sites began paywalling their API, causing third party integrations and apps to collapse.

I’m wondering, did any of these sites end up with paying customers for the API? Are there examples of third parties paying to continue their services? These sites sacrificed massive amounts of community and developer good will to privatize the internet - how did it work out for them long term?

  • bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    181·
    1 day ago

    Basically, each of these sites used open standards and APIs as a way to grow their service. Eventually once they got to the user base they wanted and beat out the competition, they could tighten the screws, lock things down, since the users didn’t have any place to go, they were locked in.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

    In terms of specifics, it’s unclear if they were ever profitable before locking things down, since the main goal at that phase wasn’t making money, it was growing active users and killing competitors. I would have to imagine that with the locked down APIs, they are more profitable, and they never really cared about the community and good will, only when it was beneficial to grow their user base.