this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2023
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Getting rid of 3rd party apps was obviously the goal...
Reddit wants people to use their own app, so they get the data
They could have done that by being better than 3rd party apps, but that's hard.
So they charged them an insane amount of money, knowing it would shut them down and leave only the official app.
Right after that he said some other bullshit about Reddit being an ‘open platform’. Just complete BS from this guy non-stop. Fuck Spez
Yep. The goal was to kill all the apps to normalize using their crap. Same thing Google is doing with youtube: make adblockers difficult so that paying for YT red is normalized.
~~I still wanna know why Narwhal was able to make it work and Apollo couldn't. Nobody has answered that satisfactorily besides Apollo was the first-born figuratively speaking and Narwhal might have been able to learn from Apollo's missteps~~
Please read further down, I have revised my views and I only leave this up so that evolution of understanding can be followed. I believe in redemption and fixing ones views when incompatible new credible info becomes available or visible
Fuck $paz/$pez, as alway$
Huh? The Apollo dev was very specific about why he couldn't make it work. The turnaround was too fast. He had users on multi-month and even annual subscriptions. Users who were effectively owed service by him. The new model would have turned all of those users into giant financial liabilities for him far beyond whatever revenue he earned from them. And theoretically there was no upper limit on how much those users could have cost him.
If they'd give him 12 months notice about the changes instead of 30 days he would have been able to keep the app running. It would have cost quite a bit more as users would have had to pay for his costs plus the api costs. But with only 30 days the only financially sane thing he could do was refund everyone, rather than let them turn into liabilities he couldn't afford.
If you're wondering why he didn't refund all existing users and then roll out an update with the higher subscriptions... I mean, I'm sure he just didn't want to because he didn't feel like it after being forced to go through all that terribleness and repeatedly being defamed by the admins.
Actually kinda glad Apollo did go down, because it forced me to reassess that pool of toxicity and GTFO there.
Thats very understandable and I have modified my reply above. Hopefully that is more agreeable and respectful of all this :)
Fuck ~~spaz~~ spez
Seems like Narwhal switched to subscriptions only
~~And Apollo/Christian could have swallowed that reality and altered the product so he didn't have to shut it all down wholsesale, no?~~
Not saying I'm not happy with the way things played out (I love Voyager 😇), but I need to understand the bigger picture here and why Narwhal can make it work when Christian portrayed it like it was unthink+doable...
Edit: Christian didn't want to be involved with Reddit and they actually did screw him in a way they had to walk back later, but not before destroying the most problematic competitor for them. This makes much more sense and I have thoroughly revised my views on the matter in partnership with all the kind folks chiming in here
the short answer is that only a few apps were willing to play ball, and reddit corp was able to walk back their initial (untenable) terms to a point where they could keep those apps afloat.
the long answer is that during the course of these 'negotiations', huffman publicly libeled the shit out of christian which forced christian to defend himself against the accusations by releasing recordings, and none of this is conducive to a healthy working relationship. neither christian nor huffman have any desire to work with one another at this point, so they don't.
See I get that then. That makes me way more sympathetic to Christian but his 'tude towards Voyager was still distasteful. He shouldn't have said anything at all if he didn't want that introduced into the narrative/record
Look, I liked him and his work, got me into this dialectical stuff for years and Im way better off in consequence. I don't wish him any ill will anymore and I will alter my rhetoic/talking points accordingly for when it comes up.
See, this is the confirmation and validation of this whole platform/dialectical crowd-sourcing discourse and such. You just changed my view that I was pretty fiercely nursing in less than 1 hour aha
i don't know what he had to say about/toward voyager, personally. 'the record' as far as anyone who's paid attention is concerned is pretty clear about who's in the right and who's a libelous, manipulative fuckwad.
Oh yeah, for sure. Like I hate that little bitch/spez, there was never any competition for biggest fuckwad when it came to spaz, I was just pissed off about Voyager and Christian's ostensible aloofness that was coloring my global perception of him.
I imagine there were 2 primary reasons, one financial, one personal:
Number of heavy users (including a lot of mods) would’ve forced Christian to implement an open-ended cost model based on individual usage, or raise rates across the board to compensate, making it ultimately cost-prohibitive for the average user, and/or
Not wanting to communicate (by folding) such a change was okay. To move to a blanket cost model is to basically admit that you’re okay with and accept the changes.
Some might say it was pure stubbornness and greed, or conclude his decision was a bad one. That’s its own topic for debate I guess.
I honestly don't even care anymore, like I've found a way to a more moderate understanding of everything and I definitely don't want anyone to have to violate their own principles and boundaries just so I can have my shiny little toy I want aha.
As long as I have Voyager now (which is infinitely more valuable since it likely won't be taken away), I'm good and I honestly wish Christian well. I'm just skeptical if I would allow myself to become reliant on any future project of his unless he has built it and communicated that he will not be able to shut it down or take it away
At the end of the day, I come to rely on my apps and tools and become emotionally enmeshed with them and I will not allow them to be taken away anymore or not have a facile contingency plan in place wherever it is necessary or desireable
It was doable, but a bit hard to swallow and restrict the app against free users and Christian didn’t want to answer to the whims of Reddit anymore apparently
I understand and can respect that perspective in that case, altho his comments about Voyager are kinda offputting in that context. Like someone continued your legacy in a way you should be smiling upon but it seems like ego and mean-spirit with that guy in this context.
Like, I was super offput by it. Also, I'm sure it was hard for Narwhal too but here we are.
Anyway, to be fair that is encapulated in the "not wanting to be helping or validating what Reddit has become" defense so Imma drop it with predjudice (good way).
Hmm, what did Christian say about voyager?
I don't want to get too much into it since we've had some positive progress but I believe someone asked about it on Mastodon and he was a little bit terse and sour-grapes about it. He could have been a part of Lemmy but he moved on I felt it was a little bit weird he held those feelings simultaneously...
Imma drop it now aha, as long as he keeps it at sour grapes and doesn't start getting sue-y, not that it would help anything but I'm comfortable leaving it at this stalemate :)