Vision: Investigating Web API Developer Experience in Relation to Terms of Service and Privacy Policies

Rapid advancement in Web technologies has seen a shift from the use and implementation of closed applications to open information sharing in the form of Web APIs (Application Programming Interface). Developers make use of Web APIs by integrating them into their Web and mobile applications. These APIs however, come with Terms of Service (ToS) and Privacy Policies drawn up by the API providers that the developers must abide by. This research seeks to identify issues developers face with Web API ToS with regard to privacy. We propose to ground our understanding of ToS and privacy policy issues and their subsequent implications on Developer Experience from content analysis of developer discourse with card sorting. We report on a small scale pilot experiment.