this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2023
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Apollo - A beautiful app built for power and speed.
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Since many of us are trying to avoid giving reddit any traffic, this space can be used to discuss Apollo, our dreams of seeing it join the Fediverse, and to give our appreciation to @[email protected] for his incredible work.
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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.
Tell me you don’t understand what is being talked about without telling me you don’t understand what is being talked about.
Let’s start with an easy one, without using any back end servers how would one serve push notifications using the Reddit API?
Push notifications aren’t costing him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year 😂
So you’ve moved from “zero” to “not hundreds of thousands.”
So, how much does Apple take from those subscriptions? What libraries does he use that cost money? How is he checking for new content from the API when the app is closed?
You came into this with “he made hundreds of thousands because that’s what people paid” and assumed there was literally zero cost to him.
Of course all of that completely ignores a main question: Is he supposed to have done all this work for free? Should he not be paid for his time and development effort? Or are you saying that he should be paid less, simply because you don’t like him? Apollo was his main job for years, you’re saying he should be homeless by now?
I never said zero though, stop making things up.
No one "ignored" that, nor was that ever a question. He chose to make an app, and he made millions of dollars from reddits content.
Where are you getting these insane accusations from?
You’re saying he had 500,000 in income. Minus the fact that Apple takes 150,000 of that, he has to pay server costs, licensing costs for libraries, bandwidth costs, and more.
So he’d be lucky if he brought in 200k a year pre tax. A little high, but not at all crazy for the founder and primary developer of an app.
As for “Reddits content” I think it’s been pointed out hundreds of times by now, Reddit didn’t make the content, didn’t pay for the content, didn’t even promote the creation of the content.
How exactly is that “millions”? That’s just a software developer job.
Reddit owns any content posted on reddit. It's reddits content.
It's millions in revenue, and he has absolutely pocketed millions from it. Again - he refused to deny it when questioned.
So the crux of your argument, is that he made normal amounts of money, over an extended time, which added up to at least a million dollars. And that’s… bad? And somehow the fact that Reddit “owns” the content because it’s a skeevy middle man matters… just because?
“Normal amounts of money” 😂
Yeah, pretty normal for a developer to make well over 100k salary a year. Take a look at some positions available, and you see many that offer over $200k plus benefits. Add in the fact that he was the main developer, paying his own benefits, and doing work developers don’t normally do… and he’s well within the expected range.
Just because you don’t know what a software developer is worth, doesn’t mean it isn’t “normal amounts of money.”
A normal developer doesn't take in 500k of subscription revenue a year + god knows however much from one off purchases + donations and merch etc.
I'm a senior developer btw. I know there's lots of money in it, but this guy made millions piggybacking off reddits API + reddits content and then cried poor and threw his toys out of his cot. All he had to do was make a $5/month subscription option for people that still wanted to use his app and he'd still make money from that - just not the millions that he wants.
Right, “just” charge $5 a month per user. How’s that working out for all the other Reddit alternative front ends? I only know of one, and they only recently started charging so there’s a good chance they are going to need to adjust their pricing.
Did you miss the part where Reddit was essentially asking for over $1 million a month with the (at the time) current api usage?
And why are you still talking about revenue? It’s a meaningless number in this discussion, as I already went into. The reason most developers don’t make revenue from subscriptions is because they make a salary and a company does all the work of dealing with the higher level stuff.
Look at it this way, if this was a company with a CEO, an HR employee, a developer, a back end guy (yeah, you completely ignored that he paid another developer to help) and infrastructure, you wouldn’t be saying anything about $500k profit a year, in fact you’d be wondering how the hell they managed to stay in business without selling personal information. But because this is one individual (plus the developer he paid) suddenly it’s an unreasonable amount of money? lol
Yes, just make your app subscription based at $5 a month. What do you think is so difficult about that exactly?
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.)
tbh, the original OP has accusations, without any proof. That shit got tiring on Reddit. Until then, it just seems like to me the guy is mad Christian wants to market Apollo's mascot a bit more and is trying to paint him as evil.
(FWIW, Apollo users were able to get Apollo as a Pixel Pal, so it wasn't like this came out of thin air)
EDIT: Seems like OP is also trying to rile up the Voyager community by showing a comment from Christian about how he's "contributed enough" to Voyager (with it being an Apollo clone).
Pop ups to paid users: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/z83qh4/im_an_early_supporter_and_paid_for_pro_ive_had https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/12hcrdw/ultra_spamming etc
Disabling paid access to Jailbreak users: https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/hpyybw/any_way_to_know_what_tweak_is_causing_this_i (it was originally meant to stop pirates but the tweak list included more than just piracy tweaks)
https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/z75s9r/last_chance_for_black_fridaycyber_monday_sale_on Black Friday pop ups as well as locking new features to Ultra subscription (originally meant for things that require a server only)
https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/z4l0v5/apollo_for_reddit_and_pixel_pals_black_friday increasing prices disguised as a sale
Checking r/ApolloApp can find many more examples of everything I have talked about.
I’m a long time Apollo users, so I took for granted that not everyone is aware or remembers these events
Christian's apologised for the popups on the top one:
You also seem to be presenting the increased prices as him doing it before when I'm seeing it was clearly done after.
For jailbreaking, well, if you have tweaks that allow pirating of in-app purchases, you're gonna have to deal with that tbh. He wasn't targeting jailbroken users per se, he was targeting people who are using the free IAP tweaks there. Even if the user didn't intend to use it on Apollo, those tweaks aren't discriminate in how they work (having run that tweak before when I used an iPhone). You'll have to just disable it on apps that detect it.
This will be the last reply i make towards this topic, as I am kinda getting tired of it
Yes he did apologize, but he then did it again. And again. His apology was seen as disingenuous by the community. Especially since early on he was claiming it was a bug but then not fixing it for some reason. Apologizing doesn’t discount the fact that it kept happening. I’m not sure if he even disabled it after he apologized or not, my memory is not too good on that.
That was not my intention. I was stating that he used sales as a way to increase the price. He did this frequently with lifetime (originally only $20, became $50 by the end)
The problem was that his blacklist tweak list included more than just those piracy tweaks. He should’ve done more research before completely locking people out of their subscription. Not a big deal though, since apparently it was also easily bypassed.
I'm also pretty much done here too - I'm not saying the criticism is bad, if the popups were that bad then yeah, sure, but I've seen some genuinely awful stuff coming from the subreddit. Blatant homophobia towards people defending him, for one. Best thing I can say, given what the worst of the subreddit has come to (which, in the case of general homophobia, tracks with other subreddits according to people I know), don't be surprised if people found the posts to be an attack.