4chan vs Facebook

4chan's API serves the same read-only board and thread data every page renders — board lists, catalogs, threads, and posts — as plain JSON from the dedicated a.4cdn.org host, with no registration, key, or authentication of any kind required. Media referenced by posts is served from the sibling i.4cdn.org host, and the project's own GitHub repository (4chan/4chan-API) hosts the reference client and doubles as the canonical documentation, including the rule to cap requests at one per second. Cross-origin use from a browser is limited in practice: both the docs and a live probe confirm the API's CORS policy only allows requests originating from 4chan's own board pages, so a third-party site must proxy requests server-side rather than call it directly from client-side JavaScript.

Meta's Graph API is the single HTTP interface behind Facebook Login, Page management, and Social Plugins, exposing versioned endpoints under graph.facebook.com that read and write data about people, Pages, and Groups once a user grants OAuth permissions. Most scopes that touch another person's data or a business Page require Meta's app review process before they work outside development mode, and the same Graph API infrastructure also underlies Instagram's Business API stack.