The primary issue in my mind is that the api-s don't follow one well-defined standard, like signed Nostr events queried with filters.
This way you don't have to keep rewriting interfaces, and all data is verfiable.
The "closed" part is tricky: Even with wide-spread Nostr adoption I don't think that we would have completely free access to data.
Data is precious and people will protect it with digital fences, even if everything is signed and standardized.
But to the degree everything is interoperable and verifiable, we are in a very good place.
Even small backups can help in a major way. Real censorship becomes too costly in practice even for a large player.
It will result in more competition and therefore more openness as well.
Replies (3)
The one standard is absolutely not a problem - this is exactly what LLMs excel at.
If you tell it to use the OpenLibrary API, or OpenStreetMaps API, it will do it perfectly, because these APIs don't require authentication. These integrations feel absolutely magical.
Both APIs you mention live off donations. This is not really feasible for the whole internet.
Furthermore, they still apply rate limiting and such to not be abused. What if I want to run a service that puts heavy load on the that api but am ready to pay for it?
IP based rate limiting is a primitive technique compared to what Nostr offers.
If you want curated data sustainably you will need authentication and you are better off with a paid service beyond a threshold for sure.
If on the other hand some successful service goes rogue you will have much better guarantees to fork that service and jailbreak the data, if it uses signed and standardized Nostr events.
Otherwise your left with unverifiable data that only makes sense in a proprietary format that no one else uses.
That's exactly what Lightning excels at.
