Hive being third party app friendly is a very strong selling point unlike Reddit with the API debacle.
They are pulling the plug on free API and now many apps that have been used for years are going poof GONE e.g. RedditIsFun
https://www.talklittle.com/rif-is-fun/goodbye
I just hope Hive never goes this route with trying to monetize API calls. Thankfully the witnesses have been generous with their compute resources.
I guess the freeness of the data depends on each node and they can choose how to operate. If they are witnesses then they can income from that. I'm interested to see how things scale.