The arc repeats with remarkable consistency. A platform opens an API to attract developers. Developers build real businesses on it. Some of those businesses become good enough to look like competitors, or the data turns out to be worth more sold in bulk than given away. The terms change. Access narrows. Pricing appears. The ecosystem the platform recruited is squeezed out of the part of the market the platform now wants.
Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Reddit — the specifics differ and the shape does not. And it is rarely a single dramatic shutdown. APIs are taken away in many quieter ways: rate limits cut, endpoints removed, new review processes, pricing that only large incumbents can pay, terms that forbid the use case you built on.
There is usually a legitimate business reason in there somewhere — abuse, cost, privacy obligations after a scandal. What makes it corrosive is the sequence: extract as much value from developers as possible while you need them, then withdraw the thing they built on. That does not just cost you those developers. It teaches an entire market that public APIs cannot be depended on, and the whole space pays for that.
If you run a platform, the lesson is that your API terms are a promise about your future behavior, and people are pricing your trustworthiness whether or not you are managing it.
