Yes but then they have no control over the platform i.e you can escape viewing ads. Their problem is they aren't making money so they are being very difficult about correcting it
I think the point is that a paid api is a replacement for the ad based monetisation model. So if the user is paying for using the api, they no longer should be seeing ads.
Precisely. Price individual account access at the same price that user would have generated with advertising MRR, but with a reasonable number of API calls/month to be used for when the user is browsing via a third party app. It's totally nutso that it's not their approach.