Christian has decided to squeeze Apollo again for more money, besides the wallpapers and asking people to decline their prorated refund. Christian additionally forced a pop up ad advertising this plushie.
This is just exposing to more people the greediness that Christian has tapped into recently. Recall that previously, Christian forced daily pop up ads to paid pro users to get them to subscribe to ultra, which was originally stated to only be for notifications since it required a server, but now had all new features attached to it, even very simple local features. Reddit did him dirty, but to be honest, he may have had it coming. He previously disabled ultra access to Jailbroken devices as well, even if they were valid paid users. Christian also didn’t provide refunds to lifetime users who bought it before all the API stuff. Speaking of that, does anyone remember how instead of stating the price was increasing (which happened all the time) he instead said it was “going on sale at the old price”? Kinda misleading.
I can’t get behind this narrative. Honestly, how else do you market this product? On Twitter? On Facebook? Mastodon maybe?
Look, he’s updating an app that hasn’t been operational in months… nobody who still has that app has any illusions of it coming back. What do they expect when they open that app?
I won’t buy a plushie, since I don’t have a place for it, but I had many fond years using Apollo, and wouldn’t mind buying something like this at all, and I would have never known otherwise (except for people complaining about it online.)
This is where I am. I don’t get the narrative of Darth Christian abusing the populace. He’s an independent gig worker marketing his skills and products.
He’s a millionaire who made those millions from using Reddits free API. Now he’s just grifting.
Source on his net worth?
He has said that he made millions over the years from Apollo. I don’t bookmark every comment he ever makes.
Only time he’s ever said anything close to that was a hypothetical.
https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-app-founders-apollo-riff-made-millions-using-api-2023-6
Those yearly subscribers alone bring in half a mill a year.
When someone asks you to confirm that you’ve made millions of dollars and you don’t deny it, it’s generally because it’s true.
Using your logic, if I sell lemonade at a stand for $1 a glass, and sell 1000 glasses, I’ve made $1000. Regardless of how much it costs to make the lemonade, the cost of the stand, the cost of the property the stand is on.
Are you intentionally ignoring the cost of developing and running the app? Or did you assume things like servers, bandwidth, licenses and more were all free?
His servers etc aren’t going to cost much because he’s not doing any of the heavy lifting. His app just uses reddits API. He’s not storing any content from the API. He’s not recording upvotes. He’s not hosting anything from there. At most he has a server for his paying customers account details. He. Isn’t. Serving. The. Reddit. Traffic. Bandwidth doesn’t come into it, nor do servers. Licenses? What licenses? There is no cost of “running” the app. You’re talking like someone that has absolutely no idea how apps work. None of the traffic from Apollo runs through Christians servers. It’s all between the customers phone and reddits servers.
If you’re taking in a minimum of $500k a year making a reddit app, you’re making minimum $490k profit a year from that.
The “product” is an attempt to get people who feel sad to give him more money. What other app tries sells plushies of its logo?
Many sell merch. For example, I play an idle game called Melvor Idle that routinely sells plushies of in game pets.
That’s a game, not a (defunct) social media app
You asked “what other app sells plushies of its logo?”
Melvor Idle has featured those pets in its logos and and meets your question. Your only response to that was to double down and drag those goalposts further down the field by changing the criteria.
I get that you’re super butthurt over this, but maybe you need to step back, take a breath, get some perspective and figure out why others actions that have no impact on your life bother you so much. How does this change your life? How would your life be different if this happened without your knowledge or never happened?
I bet your life wouldn’t be significantly different other than the amount of energy you’re exerting letting this anger you.
No “goalposts” were moved. I was perhaps not specific enough when I said app, which is why I clarified more.
There’s no reason to be passive aggressive about this. You make it sound like I dedicate my life to this, when all I did was make one post here, and outlined some of my concerns with some of the developers behavior.
Asking for an example, then “clarifying” so that the criteria changes in order that the example — which answers the prior questions but now — doesn’t meet the later change is literally “shifting the goalposts”. You might look up the definition.
And your multiple replies to comments to different people that disagree all over this post are a bit more than making “one post”.
This “criteria” was my original intent all along. English is not my first language so maybe i was not so clear. And is it really so wrong to reply to people that come up in my inbox?
Honestly, Lemmy users can get antsy over the weirdest shit. Not a fan of that being carried over from Reddit/Twitter to the fediverse.
This post was crossposted to the Reddit community on one of the major instances, to which it was downvoted a lot. Reddthat doesn’t allow downvotes, but the major Lemmy instances and the one I’m on do. Between that and TeckFire’s top comment (though Reddthat doesn’t federate downvotes, it’s got more upvotes than the OP), I think it’s safe to say the majority of people disagree with OP.
And you’re saying that that’s unethical because…?
I mean think about it. Why does any company sell merch? Is it unethical for them to sell it? Why or why not?
It’s not inherently unethical to sell merch. It’s however apparent to me that this seems to be a cash grab. The app died months ago. This is further apparent to me when acknowledging the greediness Christian has shown before. It is unethical to try and use your already dead app to try and gain even more money by selling a low-effort plushie.
Again I ask… what makes this a “cash grab” and other merch not? Is it because this service is no longer active? What if there was a new plush released for Phantasy Star Online, a now defunct but beloved game?
I’m not sure what Phantasy Star Online is, but yes it is because he is releasing merch for his defunct app months after the fact while also being radio silence towards the Apollo community. Christian says he wants to move on, but I guess that doesn’t apply to money making ventures.
I’m also more critical on this because of his previous more greedy behavior, which I outlined in my main post as well.
What is the statute of limitations you are arbitrarily lining up for when it’s okay to sell merch, then? As soon as a product with a live service is no longer functioning?
As far as “move on” and “money making” goes… I just don’t see the big deal. He doesn’t want to keep developing Apollo, and wants a new project, hence moving on. But as far as reminiscing on good times, is that now not allowed?
And as far as the refunds for lifetime users goes, what would be an acceptable refund? For every person who bought the lifetime to get a refund? Everyone who bought it a year back? Six months? Three months? You buy it for the lifetime of the product, and it was lifetimed. Perhaps he didn’t have a good way of sorting data for users and when they purchased the memberships, making this a moot point. Perhaps he didn’t have the money to refund it after refunding everyone else. Or perhaps a million other possibilities. Regardless, I don’t see this as unethical, just unfortunate.
I covered much more than just the lifetime refunds, but do you really believe that there was no way for Christian to refund people who bought lifetime before all the API stuff? Someone could’ve seen Christian reassuring that API is not an issue, buy lifetime, and basically get screwed over. The plushie is a last straw sort of deal. He wants to completely move on from Apollo, unless there’s a chance he can make some more money from it. Not sure how you call selling a plushie of your logo posthumously “reminiscing on good times” while already selling them on wallpapers and convincing them to decline their prorated refunds.
Considering the time that post came out, the situation was developing rapidly. I won’t fault someone for not seeing the future, especially since his updates were very detailed and took a sharp turn very quickly in their tone. I don’t have omniscience and won’t judge without evidence.
Also, I don’t think asking users if they’re okay with not refunding is unethical. They could still be refunded if they wanted to… it’s just asking for the equivalent of a donation at that point (aside from lifetime, not discussing that.) Moreover, again, I don’t think it’s unethical to advertise and sell products, especially since it’s not misleading. It’s showing you exactly what you’re getting, a wallpaper or a plushie. Unless he decides to take money and not deliver on a product he advertised, I still don’t see what the problem is.
Essentially your argument (to me) is this:
Christian is accused of not refunding lifetime users, asking users who’ve paid if they are okay with not getting an offered refund, making public optimistic comments that aged like milk, and advertising and selling products in a defunct app that has not worked for anything else in several months (nor does it claim to on the App Store.)
I would also like to add on that this pop up was shown to all sideloaded Apollo users as well.
Ah… so unofficial installations of an old app got a notification that was only intended for people who had a non-functional version of the app, because that’s what the official update was set as? The audacity!
In all seriousness, that’s like saying someone with a pirated copy of a game having a bug and complaining about it to the one who runs the server is justified. Actually, not even a bug, just a regular notification… that only notifies you after you open the app……
You see how thin this argument is, surely?