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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Christian squeezing Apollo for its last bit of money (old.reddit.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 57 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.)

[–] [email protected] 35 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He’s a millionaire who made those millions from using Reddits free API. Now he’s just grifting.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Source on his net worth?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He has said that he made millions over the years from Apollo. I don't bookmark every comment he ever makes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Only time he’s ever said anything close to that was a hypothetical.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

https://www.businessinsider.com/reddit-ceo-app-founders-apollo-riff-made-millions-using-api-2023-6

Apollo's Selig did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment regarding the "millions" Huffman claims he has made. But when reached The Verge reached out to him for comment, he did not deny the claim.

Selig has said that Apollo has around 50,000 yearly subscribers that pay around $10 per year.

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (13 children)

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?

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Many sell merch. For example, I play an idle game called Melvor Idle that routinely sells plushies of in game pets.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s a game, not a (defunct) social media app

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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”.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

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).

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I would also like to add on that this pop up was shown to all sideloaded Apollo users as well.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

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?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Spez sucks.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

True

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yes

[–] EsteemedRectangle 3 points 1 year ago

Yep

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

How many fucking communities do we need for the single, now defunct app "apollo"???

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

i only see this one

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Reddit did him dirty

Did they? He literally made millions of dollars from Reddits product and Reddit didn’t see a cent from him.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Reddit makes millions of dollars from other people's content without them seeing a cent of it

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Yes, Reddit is all just user content, so I do not feel too bad for them, however it is true that Reddit’s free service in the form of their API made Christian potentially millions. However I do feel like there was a better compromise rather than what ended up happening.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

And then gets mad when OpenAI uses that data. Like bro it wasn't your data in the first place.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Their product is a content sharing community website. That's what it's made to do.

Christians product was literally just taking reddit and putting it in an app. There's a pretty big difference.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a pretty dumb take.

He took a very ugly website and made it into an intuitive, beautiful, easy to use app. You can hate on him all you want, but he did an amazing job at making Reddit tolerable, and that takes work and effort.

He used the APIs they provided to do it, then they took them back when they realized they could profit more by not offering up APIs and only letting people go through their ad-filled junk app and site.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He took a very ugly website and made it into an intuitive, beautiful, easy to use app.

His app is just old.reddit.com as an app. It's just the reddit app but with more customisation and better gesture support.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

lol you've either never used old.Reddit or never used Apollo. Either way, this is a worse take than your last one

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I have, to both.. It's reddit with gesture support.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And a clean, intuitive UI. And support. And updates that listened to its user base. And no ad every 3 posts. It's supposed to be Reddit, if that's what you're saying it is like that's a bad thing then that's stupid.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The UI is no more "intuitive" than the reddit site or official reddit app. Like I said, it's reddit with gesture support.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

At this point I'll assume you're just trolling, old Reddit is notoriously difficult to use and that's pretty common knowledge. It's off putting for most users, which is why they had to completely remake it with new Reddit.

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