---
published: true
layout: post
title: Where Good APIs Go Bad
date: 2025-04-02T09:00:00.000Z
tags:
  - Monetization
  - Investments
  - Contracts
  - Derivatives
image: https://kinlane-productions2.s3.amazonaws.com/algorotoscope-master/bf-skinner-dragon-shadow-sun-2.jpg
---
I have done a lot of soul searching over the years to try and understand the line between a good API and a bad API. It can be hard to tell between the two, but somewhere along the way APIs we found useful and beneficial to our applications change, and begin to become less useful, less beneficial, and even harmful and extractive. To help tell more precise stories on the subject I have done a lot of other sketching and more verbose storytelling of the evolution of Facebook and other APIs that have shaped the conversation to come up with handful of things that signal an API has likely lost their way from the original reasons we began to an API.

- **Contracts** - When a platform begins indirectly charging for access to the data produced from another set of useful and often free APIs.
- **Derivatives** - When a platform begins charging for access to derivatives of an API like insights, artificial intelligence, and other forms of APIs.
- **Markets** - When a platform creates a market or a place for other players to place real money on derivatives made available on top of APIs.
- **Investments** - When a platform has taken on a substantial amount of investment that exceeds the value or revenue associated with any API.

When business leadership moves beyond the original intent of APIs being made available to developers and end users of applications but on an API is usually when things tend to go wrong for APIs. The original intent or promise of an API changes at this moment, and business leadership becomes beholden to the contracts made on top of resource extraction occurring via original APIs. When the digital resources developers and end-users produce become the value wrapped in derivatives, bet on in a market, and drive wider investment in a company, this is when APIs switch from providing value to extracting value to power the new focus of a company.