Here's the thing: any API tool that could be used to make something interesting can also be used by a bot. That's how we got all the bots we have. Any tool which can be used for insight and interaction can be used for automation.

If you want to remove the ability to automate, you have to remove the ability to interact. You don't want that. That is exactly the opposite of what you want.

Personally, my disappointment with this is that it is intended to only cover some of the social network side of the database and not, explicitly, the rest of the available public information on the blockchain which is specifically about wallets and transactions and money. That's going to be a real problem for people who are currently doing things like research into the interaction between the social network and fiscal/financial transactions on the blockchain.

And before you go and look at some of my recent work, yes, that means some forms of automated detection of bot-like behavior in order to make it easier for people to filter out those accounts.

I'm curious as to what the API for content-access is going to look like for building new discovery systems for content off the top of it. It looks like Hive will be a great boon for that kind of research. I'm looking forward to that part and of the fact that it should be easily accessible in Python.

I'm a little discontent that I will continue to have to go through a third party database provider to continue to have access to some of the most important data on the blockchain. That is more than a little annoying.

It is, however, good to see any kind of real development going on. Finally.