It was an exaggeration, and sadly you've latched on to that rather than actually address my point. A better example could have been parking a truck in front of your garage door.
Just because something can be changed to become excludable, does not mean that it is therefore always excludable. Just because I could in the future gate a public road creating a private road, doesn't mean that that public road road is right now excludable.
There's no "end of story" here unless you are a puritan for public goods, which is completely ideological as one can trivially concoct ways to have excludability in just about anything. That is just silly, pedantic, and simply detracts from the point that something can be provided in a non-exclusionary way to be a quasi-public good.
Your other point -- a subjective viewpoint that public API's are a detriment or have a negative impact -- well, we will just have to agree to disagree here.
RE: Proposal: Funding for anyx.io API Infrastructure Recurrent Costs