Oh Christian…when will you learn you’re not big enough to disrupt existing power structures?
You’re an Aaron Swartz; not a Sam Altman…
(P.S. Love what you do; Posted from Voyager née Apollo)
this post was submitted on 02 Oct 2024
59 points (96.8% liked)
Technology
60038 readers
2862 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
YSK: He's not crazy about Voyager. Gives me mixed feelings about him, he could have done well giving it his blessing or doing Lemmy himself. I wanna like him but he keeps making terrible choices
I know; I understand where he was coming from and kinda get it, but I’m not going to stop using it.
It highkey kinda sucks tho, being implicitly all like "I I can'thave Apollo do Reddit than nobody can have it!". Its really childish and selfish in the way it fucks over almthe people who grew dependant on it for their Reddit-type social fix app
As a practical matter, I wouldn't invest any time or money into the guy's projects anymore not because he doesn't do amazing UI/UX/App work, but because he is not someone is seems to plan long-term or is advised by anyone who could have told him this would be a problem legally or administratively etc.
There are indie app developers who create incredible and profitable apps who aren't getting constantly yanked off the app store or denied service or whatever. To be fair, I think Reddit had a hard-on for fucking him over but I disagree with how he dealt with that both in the moment and more removed from that moment when he shut the whole thing down and threw various tantrums about Reddit and then more low-key about Voyager
It highkey kinda sucks tho, being implicitly all like "I I can'thave Apollo do Reddit than nobody can have it!". Its really childish and selfish in the way it fucks over almthe people who grew dependant on it for their Reddit-type social fix app
Maybe I’ve missed something but as far as I’m aware he hasn’t done anything to try and stop Voyager; he just didn’t give it a seal of approval.
As a practical matter, I wouldn't invest any time or money into the guy's projects anymore not because he doesn't do amazing UI/UX/App work, but because he is not someone is seems to plan long-term or is advised by anyone who could have told him this would be a problem legally or administratively etc.
I think he absolutely does plan ahead. The fact that he was able to absorb the expense of all the refunds he was forced to issue for subscriptions that extended beyond his ability to access the API speaks directly to that.
Not to mention his foresight in being able to bring receipts when Spez and the other Reddit admins attempted to smear him in the press.
I think you feel more strongly about it than I do, so I’m not trying to change your mind or anything. I’m just adding my perspective.
All fair points, i just felt it was shitty for him to act like nobody or fans shouldn't recreate what he got us all hooked on and that he had some sort of expectation of commerical purity that we were violating by not letting Apollo die the way he dictated
Not that I expected him to be able to sell it or anything but he could have taken a good, long, relaxing vacation and taken the strongest stand against the company that fucked him over and needed a good whooping by following the other top Reddit 3rd party apps that didn't want to deal with Reddit's bullshit new API terms and redone Apollo for Lemmy like Voyager did and I am eternally grateful for having done. Reminds me I need to donate this month to the one who actually made it possible and is an absolute champ
He's posted before that Day 1 sales covered the cost the device itself, so a decent chuck of everything after that will have been pure profit. It was probably always doomed, what with YouTube being YouTube, so it doesn't look like he's too shaken up about it.
It kinda feels like this was calculated. He wasn’t doing much to truly improve or maintain it.
As someone who tried to use it, it was always buggy and made weird decisions that were not that thoughtful.
He was just trying to catch the possible wave of early adopters.
The television app by sandwich is also light years ahead of Juno. Juno is one of the only paid apps I have ever refunded it was so bad.