Seems like Narwhal switched to subscriptions only
Comment on Reddit moderator rebellion: AI moderation is part of the solution
cheese_greater@lemmy.world 1 year agoI still wanna know why Narwhal made i 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
Aatube@kbin.social 1 year ago
cheese_greater@lemmy.world 1 year ago
And Apollo/Christian could have swallowed that reality and altered the product so he didn’t have to shut it all down wholsesale, no?
hypnicjerk@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
cheese_greater@lemmy.world 1 year ago
See I get that then. That makes me way more sympathetic to Christian but his 'tude towards Voyager was still distasteful. He shouldn’thave said anything at all if he didn’t want that introduced into the narrative/record
DriftingDeep@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
cheese_greater@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I honestly don’t care anymore, like I’ve found a way to a more moderate understanding of everything and I ** definitely**don’t want him to violate his own principles and boundaries just so I can have my shiny little toy I want aha.
Aatube@kbin.social 1 year ago
It was doable, but a bit hard and Christian didn’t want to answer to the whims of Reddit anymore apparently
cheese_greater@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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
admiralteal@kbin.social 1 year ago
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 caused all of those users into giant financial liabilities for him far beyond whatever revenue he earned from them.
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.
oDDmON@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Actually kinda glad Apollo did go down, because it forced me to reassess that pool of toxicity and GTFO there.
cheese_greater@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Thats very understandable and I have modified my reply above. Hopefully that is more agreeable and respectful of all this :)