Apollo Now Offers Option to Decline Refund Ahead of June 30 Shutdown

[ninethirty]

You are now pitching a bait and switch business model as a good thing.

You will never grasp the movement because you somehow think that Reddit introducing a free API (which you stated lost them big money and which was too dumb to even serve ads) was a sound business plan, while the Apollo developer using that free API was a bad business plan. That is some crazy Schrödinger’s cat stuff you are spewing.

No. Again, that's something you made up. I will never grasp the movement because I don't understand how so many people are defending a developer who made millions based on everything that reddit and users built, and is now asking for charity, because his business predictably has ended.

That's what's crazy.

 

[ninethirty]

I thought I answered that point pretty well. Christian asked for a favour, and we agreed. End of story. He's not entitled to the money supposedly earmarked as refunds, and yet here we are telling him "You know what, hold on to it and get a cuppa on my behalf". You are the one here who can't seem to let go for some reason and seem convinced that he is some massive scammer and that we are the ones living in the matrix and need to wake up.

I don't know what more I can say beyond "noted" and continuing to toss a few more dollars his way. Just because I can.

You did not answer that point well. I really want to be hesitant about using the word "sucker" for fear of having my comment removed, but that is how I feel about anyone that is declining a refund. But hey, good for him. If he makes a ton of money off you all, I guess, good for him.

 

[bgillander]

I thought I answered that point pretty well. Christian asked for a favour, and we agreed. End of story. He's not entitled to the money supposedly earmarked as refunds, and yet here we are telling him "You know what, hold on to it and get a cuppa on my behalf". You are the one here who can't seem to let go for some reason and seem convinced that he is some massive scammer and that we are the ones living in the matrix and need to wake up.

I don't know what more I can say beyond "noted" and continuing to toss a few more dollars his way. Just because I can.

It seems like there is a group of people that cannot understand how a developer could possibly be liked by any of his customers. Their posts give lots of clues as to why that concept would be completely foreign to them.

 

[123]

I'm aware that reddit previously didn't charge for API access, yes.

So why are you then constantly talking about "leeching"?

ninethirty logic:
- If in the terms it says Reddit can use all their users' content and moderation work for free it is perfectly fine.

- If in the terms it says Reddit API use is free it is bad bad leeching.

 

[123]

Don't ask me. Ask reddit. They make the rules.

Those were new rules in response to what happened. No such rules existed before as subreddits were always something created by their creating users according to their own rules including being private. You obviously have no clue at all about the whole situation.

 

[123]

he certainly shouldn't be asking users to decline a refund when his net worth is in the millions

He made a million people's life better over the past few years. He created an extraordinary frontend to a useless backend. Why shouldn't he be asking for some final gesture of appreciation? What has this to do with his net worth?

 

[mdatwood]

Twitter manually revoked API access to popular apps over the course of a day, it was not an automatic cutoff. They could not restart their apps even if they paid the outrageous API costs. It was two birds one stone.

Reddit could offer a separate deal for standard API calls and API calls intended for apps on a case by case basis if they did not want to kill 3rd party apps. It’s not like there’s more than 20 that are worth even mentioning.

They could do some work to offer the apps a different feed and pricing model, but it's work they either can't or don't want to do. Twitter just shut off access without an account supposedly to stop LLMs from scraping. The claim was they were being DDOSed by the scrapers.

There is a multi-billion dollar war going on between the content hosts and LLMs. The apps were casualties.

 

[123]

There is a multi-billion dollar war going on between the content hosts and LLMs. The apps were casualties.

Not really. It's not like there are millions of LLMs and apps and noone knows who is what. These apps were deliberately targeted.

 

[ninethirty]

I thought I answered that point pretty well. Christian asked for a favour, and we agreed. End of story. He's not entitled to the money supposedly earmarked as refunds, and yet here we are telling him "You know what, hold on to it and get a cuppa on my behalf". You are the one here who can't seem to let go for some reason and seem convinced that he is some massive scammer and that we are the ones living in the matrix and need to wake up.

I don't know what more I can say beyond "noted" and continuing to toss a few more dollars his way. Just because I can.

I don't think he's a massive scammer, there's certainly no genius element to any sort of plot to keep people's money here, he's just outright saying "I'll take your charity please," when he's made literal millions on this whole thing. I don't know why that doesn't seem strange to people.

 

[ninethirty]

So why are you then constantly talking about "leeching"?

ninethirty logic:
- If in the terms it says Reddit can use all their users' content and moderation work for free it is perfectly fine.

- If in the terms it says Reddit API use is free it is bad bad leeching.

I'm not constantly talking about "leeching." If I've even used that word once, it wasn't with any sort of passion. It's just funny how in one breath people will talk about how reddit is awful because mods are unpaid and users do all the work, but in the next, Selig is the victim because reddit did all the work creating the platform, and users do all the work providing content, but now they're taking that away from him after he made millions primarily from the work of others.

Again, just to be clear, I would have done the same thing he did. I would have created a front end, made millions, and I wouldn't feel one tiny bit bad about it. But when the gravy train ended, I wouldn't have sulked, thrown a pity party, and then asked my users to let me keep the money they gave me for services I can no longer deliver because I didn't have a great business plan.

 

[ninethirty]

Those were new rules in response to what happened. No such rules existed before as subreddits were always something created by their creating users according to their own rules including being private. You obviously have no clue at all about the whole situation.

The irony.

https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/x97i6k

Note the dates.

 

[ninethirty]

He made a million people's life better over the past few years. He created an extraordinary frontend to a useless backend. Why shouldn't he be asking for some final gesture of appreciation? What has this to do with his net worth?

If the situation were reversed, and reddit were forced to offer refunds but asked users to please decline them so they could keep the money, people would be outraged. Selig isn't some small fish. He's made more money than 99% of the people protesting will ever have in their entire lives. From the moment he created Apollo, it was entirely dependent on something out of his control and yet he charged people for "lifetime memberships," he couldn't possibly guarantee. He isn't owed some final gesture of appreciation, and even if he is, he really shouldn't the one suggesting it.

Imagine a millionaire on the street, panhandling. That's exactly what this is. It is beyond wild to see people tossing change in his hat.

 

[123]

The irony.

https://www.reddit.com/r/modnews/comments/x97i6k

Note the dates.

Note the content. It says nothing about not allowing private subreddits and the "violation of rule 4" was made up after the fact.

 

[123]

Selig isn't some small fish.

Again, you are missing the point. This is completely irrelevant. Apollo wasn't "some small fish" either. It had millions of happy users. Selig has every right to ask for a farewell gift, whether he is a millionaire or not. He deserves every penny and more, because he made something extraordinary. Something 99.9999% of his users never did, so who cares 99% will never be as rich as he is. Well, apparently a handful of jealous people in this forum do, though it's not clear if it is about the money or because they will never create anything meaningful to earn community respect as he did.

 

[123]

It's just funny how in one breath people will talk about how reddit is awful because mods are unpaid and users do all the work, but in the next, Selig is the victim

The one thing that you don't understand is that this was a great app and it is not Selig who is the victim, it is the users. It is ME! And it is absolutely clear that the only one to blame here is Reddit who never negotiated in good faith.

That said, your move to reverse the argument is noted and doesn't work. Free Reddit labour was only brought up in response to people accusing Selig of stealing and leeching.

 

[ninethirty]

Note the content. It says nothing about not allowing private subreddits and the "violation of rule 4" was made up after the fact.

They violated rule 4 and were called on it. Not more complicated than that. This isn't the great injustice you're trying to make it out to be.

 

[ninethirty]

Again, you are missing the point. This is completely irrelevant. Apollo wasn't "some small fish" either. It had millions of happy users. Selig has every right to ask for a farewell gift, whether he is a millionaire or not. He deserves every penny and more, because he made something extraordinary. Something 99.9999% of his users never did, so who cares 99% will never be as rich as he is. Well, apparently a handful of jealous people in this forum do, though it's not clear if it is about the money or because they will never create anything meaningful to earn community respect as he did.

No, I'm not missing any point. Bill Gates created some pretty extraordinary stuff as well. Should he start a kickstarter and ask for donations from people because he's no longer the CEO of Microsoft?

It's not about jealousy. I'm not jealous, I'm not mad, I'm staring in disbelief at people protesting on behalf of a guy who got rich doing exactly what they attack reddit for (building their business on the creation of others), and then he has the gall to ask for donations because the gravy train has ended and people are all "yeah, he deserves the fees we paid him for even though he can't deliver, because."

 

[ninethirty]

The one thing that you don't understand is that this was a great app and it is not Selig who is the victim, it is the users. It is ME! And it is absolutely clear that the only one to blame here is Reddit who never negotiated in good faith.

That said, your move to reverse the argument is noted and doesn't work. Free Reddit labour was only brought up in response to people accusing Selig of stealing and leeching.

Oh YOU'RE the victim? Poor you! Reddit never needed to negotiate at all. There's nothing to negotiate. Reddit sets the price and the price is the price. End of story. That's the point you're missing.

But I do find it amusing that you're acknowledging that Selig isn't the victim (he isn't), and that because you're the victim, you should decline your refund for services not rendered and give that money to Selig instead. Makes perfect sense.

 

[123]

They violated rule 4 and were called on it. Not more complicated than that. This isn't the great injustice you're trying to make it out to be.

Private subreddits are nowhere mentioned in rule 4z

 

[123]

It's not about jealousy. I'm not jealous,

Of course you are not. 🤣

 

[123]

But I do find it amusing that you're acknowledging that Selig isn't the victim (he isn't), and that because you're the victim, you should decline your refund for services not rendered and give that money to Selig instead. Makes perfect sense.

It is completely normal that people who have enjoyed something extraordinary show their appreciation by gifting to the person responsible. I understand this concept makes no sense to people who don't see value in quality products.

 

[stevet]

I like your stance. That said, Apple should charge double for all their products, because they're a business and should suck every penny it can from consumers.

You're on board with that, right?

It’s literally the reason their products are more expensive. They plan for cost of product support, updates, etc….

 

[stevet]

It’s not that dissimilar from the Tweetbot incident and I am glad other developers are able to learn something from it on how to deal with the fallout when your app has to shutter.

Did they really learn though? If he learned from the Twitter side show he would have kept money in the bank to cover refunds. Technically, spending money that can still be refunded usually isn’t allowed in business.

He also wasn’t the only one to be impacted by this, the fact he’s the only one mentioned tells you a lot.

 

[atokads]

Did they really learn though? If he learned from the Twitter side show he would have kept money in the bank to cover refunds. Technically, spending money that can still be refunded usually isn’t allowed in business.

He also wasn’t the only one to be impacted by this, the fact he’s the only one mentioned tells you a lot.

First of all, I don't think he's ever said he won't be able to cover the refunds.

He's certainly trying to maximize revenue before Apollo is done. Nothing wrong with that.

This is also the second time (at least!) someone has thrown out that spending money that can still be refunded usually isn't allowed in business or is illegal; it's not.

When an annual subscription order is placed, GAAP would say the amount of the subscription should be credited to advances and debited to cash, and each month 1/12th of the annual subscription would convert from advances to revenue. You don't need to wait until it is recognized as revenue to spend the cash, as was implied.

It certainly prudent for a business to ensure that assets exceed liabilities, that much is true.

I find it interesting that some believe he's a multi-millionaire and must have $3 mill in the bank and can over the refunds no problem and some believe he can't cover the refunds. I think the most reasonable assumption we can make is that he is trying to minimize his liabilities, like any business does.

Finally, I'm not sure why the dig about Christian being the only one who has mentioned this. Frankly, not all other Reddit apps are going to be affected; RIF - as I understand it, anyway - made money from ads, not subscriptions and so doesn't have this problem.

I'm not sure how Sync/Baconreader/the rest of the apps that shut down made money - but anyone without annual subscriptions avoid it.

And I'm guessing most of us around here don't hang out on the sites they might discuss the issues the Android app makers faced and why they decided to shut down. (If anyone has insight into that, I'm curious to hear).

 

[OmahaGTP]

This thread is as sad as it is hilarious. To the do-nothings that have such a problem with this, I say -

Don’t let the door hit you on the way out 👋🏻