Power is the thing APIs are really about once you look past the technology, and naming it plainly has been one of the central projects of my work. An API is a power relationship encoded in a technical interface. It defines who can access what, on whose terms, with what recourse — and those are questions of power. The platform that holds the data has power over the developers who depend on it. The company that controls the algorithm has power over the people it affects. The person who knows where all the APIs are has power within their organization. The whole API economy is shot through with asymmetric power relationships — between platforms and developers, between companies and users, between those who understand APIs and those who don’t — and APIs are the medium through which that power flows. I’ve spent fifteen years insisting that we look directly at this, because the technology framing obscures what’s actually at stake, which is power.
The right to an API key was my early articulation of API power as a political question, and it still holds up. I wrote in 2014 about the right to an API key and algorithmic organizing — framing the API key, that most mundane technical artifact, as an instrument of power. Who gets a key and who doesn’t is a question about who gets to participate. The rate limits, the terms of service, the error handling, the access controls — these are the levers of power that the platform holds over everyone who depends on it. The “right to an API key” framing was my attempt to surface the political stakes hidden inside the technical mechanics: in a world where access to data and capability flows through APIs, the power to grant or deny that access is real power, and the question of who holds it and how they wield it is a question of justice, not just engineering.
The algorithmic power dimension is where API power becomes most consequential for people beyond developers, and I pushed hard on it. I wrote in 2015 about keeping a window open into how power flows within algorithms using APIs — the idea that APIs could make the power exercised by algorithms visible and accountable. The algorithms that increasingly govern people’s lives — what they see, what they’re offered, how they’re treated — are exercises of power, and they’re mostly opaque. APIs could open them to scrutiny, but the platforms whose algorithms most need scrutiny are the ones least willing to expose them. I wrote in 2018 about automating inequality and APIs — because APIs are not neutral; they’re carriers of the power relations encoded in the systems behind them, and they can automate and obscure inequality at scale. The power dimension of APIs reaches its sharpest edge here: APIs are the interface to algorithmic systems that exercise enormous power over people, and whether that power is visible and accountable or hidden and unconstrained is one of the defining political questions of the age.
The schema and knowledge dimension reveals that API power isn’t only held by platforms — it’s also held by those who understand. I wrote in 2017 about when JSON Schema is seen as power — the recognition that controlling the schema, the definition of what data is and means, is a form of power, and that organizations sometimes lock up their schemas precisely to retain that power. And I’ve written more recently about how API knowledge is itself power: you have all the power if you know where all the APIs are, as I put it in 2025, and with API knowledge comes great power, as I wrote in 2026. Within organizations, the people who understand the APIs, who know where they are and how they work, hold real informal power, because that knowledge is the key to the systems the organization runs on. This is a more distributed, more democratic kind of API power than platform power — the power that comes from literacy and knowledge, which is available to anyone willing to learn, rather than the power that comes from owning the platform.
The visibility-versus-power tension is the sharpest political insight I’ve reached about API power, and it explains a lot of governance failure. I wrote in 2025 that API visibility and control is at odds with power and control — meaning that the transparency that would make API power accountable is precisely what those who hold the power resist. Discovery initiatives, registries, and governance efforts often fail not for technical reasons but because making the API landscape visible threatens the people whose power depends on opacity. Those who control access, who hold the schemas, who know where the APIs are, have power that visibility would dilute. This is why so much of the struggle around API governance, discovery, and transparency is really a struggle over power — the powerful resist the visibility that would constrain them. Understanding this explains why purely technical approaches to governance and discovery so often stall: they run into the political reality that visibility redistributes power, and the powerful resist.
The deepest framing I’ve arrived at, and emphasized increasingly, is that the politics of APIs is fundamentally the politics of power, and that money and politics are diminishing what APIs could have been. I wrote in 2023 about an emphasis on the politics of APIs — deliberately re-centering power and politics in a field that prefers to discuss technology. And I wrote in 2025 about business and politics diminishing the potential of APIs as the next iteration of the web — the way the concentration of power and the imperatives of money have warped the original, more democratic promise of APIs into something more extractive and more controlled. The original API dream was, in part, about distributing power — giving developers, users, and citizens access to and agency over the systems that affect them. What happened instead, in many cases, was a concentration of power, as platforms used APIs to control, extract, and entrench. The politics of API power is the ongoing struggle between these tendencies: APIs as a force for distributing power and agency, versus APIs as instruments for concentrating it. I’ve spent my career trying to push toward the former — toward API literacy as empowerment, toward transparency and accountability, toward visibility that constrains power, toward the democratic potential that APIs genuinely have. But I’ve watched the concentration of power win more often than I’d like, and I’ve insisted on naming it, because the first step toward contesting power is seeing it clearly. APIs are power, and an honest account of APIs has to be an account of who holds that power, how they wield it, and whether it serves the many or the few. That’s the politics of APIs at its core, and it’s the thing the technology framing is designed to make us not see.
References
- API Evangelist Thoughts On The Right To An API Key And Algorithmic Organizing
- Keeping A Window Open Into How Power Flows Within Algorithms Using APIs
- When JSON Schema Is Seen As Power
- Automating Inequality And APIs
- APIs Are At The Center Of The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Lawsuit Against Facebook
- An Emphasis On The Politics Of APIs
- You Have All The Power If You Know Where All The APIs Are
- API Visibility And Control Is At Odds With Power And Control
- Business And Politics Diminishing The Potential Of APIs As The Next Iteration Of The Web
- With API Knowledge Comes Great Power
