API shutting down? Please let us know.

[danmindru]

hi there,

First of all thanks for the work & this API. I think it's a great initiative.
Hope this post will be somewhat constructive, but I am writing it out of a place of frustration.

I've been opening a number of issues for what I consider to be fundamental problems with the API, e.g.:

• Unexpected posts returned by query #282

Recently I've learned that you also redact user information, such as follower count or even products made.

• Ability to retrieve a user's total follower/following counts #287

This further erodes the trust potential developers have in your API.
Moreover, it eliminates the bit of transparency that is left on the platform.

Furthermore, this decision literally put people out of business. This does not look like it has been announced officially:

• REDACTED issue #288

Are you planning to kill off this API? Please let us know, so we do not waste time building products that will be spontaneously killed.

I love ProductHunt and this API & have put a lot of time trying to offer transparency & legitimacy that you don't.
With the recent bot issues and lack of trust people are generally expressing towards the platform I'd say you need the kind of transparency that a public API can bring.

You also need to treat this more professionally and announce breaking changes in good time. The type of change you have made would have warranted a new API version to be released, and you should have deprecated V2 after a transition period.
I would even say this should have been done democratically since you are not a startup anymore. People might rely on this API for their business.
I wish I didn't have to open this issue.

Thank you for listening,
Dan

+ devladinci AndrewRadev RStankov jacobcrump