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Comment by atorodius | Hacker News Reader

I recently wondered about this, from another angle. In a way it was "weird" that they had an API, given our times. I.e., it was different: imagine if FB/Instagram/WhatsApp had an API. (I think it would be awesome, but it puts into perspective that it was weird that they had one imo)

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Instagram has an API [1][2], Facebook used to have a decent API back in the days, Reddit still has an excellent API.

But somehow Youtube and Twitter are the only services where I prefer 3rd party clients.

1: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-api

2: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/instagram-basic-display...

Back then, free APIs and mashups based on them were the hot thing. (Free geolocation resolvers, Google hat a free search API, Bing as well, FB had one, too, free weather forecasts APIs, etc., etc.) You couldn't be a trendy start-up without providing one. Things have changed a lot since.

PS: I keep a few selected apps from this era on my phone. Once a year I open them and admire them in their data-less beauty. (Favourite one: Partly Clouded) Let's call it software shinto.

It wasn't our times, it was a time when every service provided APIs, and many services provided parsable html to be scraped. The era of "mash ups".

It's incredible how things changed since the 00s.

WhatsApp has an API for $$:

https://www.whatsapp.com/business/api

Facebook actually had APIs which got closed down after a couple of data-mining scandals (first these "quiz" apps and games, then Cambridge Analytica as the final nail in the coffin), and their messenger used to support federation via XMPP. IIRC that got shut down because of spam and scams.

Facebook still has APIs, there's just a bunch of attestations and app reviews before you get access to them now. Some of them have been neutered, like friends' lists and whatnot, but there's a lot they still do.

Now devs and social engineers are using FaceBook groups to covertly gather intel... I joined a local development (to my home) group and found out after answering development questions people posted that I was suddenly getting a lot of recruiter calls out of nowhere. Facebook apparently exposes contact info in the process, or perhaps the engineers cross-reference other sites as well. It makes the job easy for scammers too.

The convoluted ways in which people are gathering info on individuals is rampant in many Facebutt groups... There is way too much unsolicited spam and it grows every time I use an app or social site.

Makes me not want to log in at all a lot.

Is it viable for advertising supported services to have a fully functional API? Some third-party developer will build an alternative client app with no ads and eliminate the revenue stream.

And they'll get their API keys revoked.

Just because you have an API doesn't mean you're going to allow anyone and everyone to use it how they want.

Facebook used to have an API (that was useable to do interesting things).

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