Interesting article, thanks for sharing!
I've run a (nowhere near as popular) public API for just about 10 years now. Definitely relate to the bit where he mentions people simply retrying the same request when they get an error. 😂
I get a lot of students using the API for learning projects, which is great! But it also means my rate limiting is more often protecting my server from accidental infinite loops, rather than anything purposely abusive.