The Apollo dev banned and removed all my comments suggesting Lemmy as an alternative to reddit.
I usually don't get too salty about these things, but that seemed uncalled for, especially since I'm on their side.
You’re directly involved in the project according to the comments so a ban for self promo is justified here
This is true, but I would have thought that removing the comments with a warning would have sufficed. A ban seems excessive.
I would agree for a first offense but we're only seeing OP's side of the story. There might be history or context that OP isn't including because it would be less sympathetic (which is literally the only reason to make this post).
Self-Promos tend to be insta-ban due to how spammed and intrusive they used to be and still are. It's one of those "everyone gets the same treatment" situations.
Hmm... That does not bode well for my hopes that Apollo would support Lemmy in the future. It could have been one of his mods and not the dev himself, though.
Yep, that is possible.
well, I saw your comment and made it here, so at least one happy customer was served.
Kind of short-sighted by Christian to do this. He could put up an instance, make an Apollo update (not trivial) and migrate a bunch of users onto Lemmy. Getting a decent percentage of Apollo users over here would be good for a producer of a popular app based client. I'd wager operating his own instance would end up being cheaper than Reddit's API fees. He could even benefit from donations to keep his servers running.
Everybody wins in this hypothetical, magical, free business idea.
Sweet, glad to have you.
I don't mind the ban too much as I don't use reddit often, but it's probably indicative that the developer plans to stay with reddit. Our door is always open to him if he changes his mind tho.
I mean, yeah. You broke the self-promotion rule. It's a kind of a dumb rule IMO. "You're allowed to promote things, but just not your things.". Someone other than you promoting Lemmy wouldn't be breaking the rules.
So, there's no real mystery here.
Plenty of other comments mentioned Voat and Lemmy ... weird https://old.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/jmd4wk8/
Maybe the difference is the fact that Dessalines is directly involved in the Lemmy project. Maybe that makes it self promotion in the Apollo dev's eyes? 🤷
I don't understand people's issue with self-promotion. If it's unhelpful, i.e. spam? Sure, nobody wants to try something completely irrelevant or broken. That's because it's irrelevant or broken.
If you've put a lot of work into something, especially for free, which solves someone's problem; I think you have every right to shout it from the roof tops?
It's not like anyone was spamming about Lemmy before people had an issue with Reddit. I had to go hunting to find it months ago.
I thought Voat was mostly defunct now.
It is. Shut down in 2020.
Boat is a sad story. The site itself was very good. When Reddit purged their worst subs and users, they all went to Voat. Predictably it became extremely toxic.
They probably have a blanket ban on promoting competing Reddit clients, and didn't bother to figure out what Lemmy was.
Perhaps, although I was pretty clear in that thread that lemmy is a reddit replacement, not an apollo one.
Exactly. There's a note that says "Self-promo -- Lemmy" right in the posted screen cap.
Which is (technically) true.
Even so, that's lame behaviour. I understand deleting comments if they are promoting their app nonstop, but to silence people you think are just mentioning an alternative app is crazy.
r/redditalternatives wasn't banned yet, so try to post there
This would be a more fitting sub.
A ban for first offense seems excessive, but to be fair, this whole situation must be quite stressful for them and being asked by hundreds of users for support of X or Y alternative seems like it would quickly become annoying.
Really really hoping it wasn’t the dev himself. That would be so disheartening.
Someone will have to ask them about it. Tell them I'd like to have good relations with them.
He has a mastodon, can you tag him here through that? Might be easier to get his attention that way vs. through reddit @[email protected]
I'll give the benefit of the doubt that they don't know what lemmy is and assumed it is just spam.
the mods of apollo has something against lemmy?
I read some comments by them today. They are really trying not to burn bridges with reddit in fear that talks over pricing will cease. I could see how removing comments would make sense to them in that light.
Not sure, don't think that dev has responded yet.
Maybe a stupid question from a Newb here such as myself, but are there currently any good 3rd party clients for Android and iOS that support Lemmy? I’ve been looking around here using the browser and this platform has promise, but being able to use clients like Apollo, Sync for Reddit, etc, would really make it more useful in my opinion.
The official list is an https://join-lemmy.org/apps , but the main iOS one (remmel) is currently abandoned, so we're updating that page soon.
There's a new iOS app being developed by @[email protected] called Mlem.
I made an android one, called Jerboa.
Thanks for the reply and information! I stumbled on that page after I made my comment - trying out Jerboa - looks good and I will take a look at Mlem. Took me a few minutes to figure out how to login using Jerboa, but once I did that it’s working well aside from a few crashes, but I imagine the system is under a lot of load with all the new accounts coming over from Reddit.
Jerboa
That is a pretty decent client. I come from Relay for Reddit, and at first glance like it a lot. Feels home.
The PWA on IOS works decently enough for my needs.
Sync > all Reddit clients anyways j/k pls don't ban
But seriously though, plenty of posts about Lemmy on the Sync sub. Would be interesting to see if the dev responds though.
I’m all for promoting lemmy but I have to say I don’t see an issue here. Self-promotion is a well recognised no no.
Fingers crossed Christian does migrate Apollo to lemmy some day but he’s probably suffering from whiplash - this has all happened very quickly. I expect he needs a break.
Seems like someone is ready to lock their app behind an even pricier subscription. I can't understand how people go above and beyond to defend him
The dev pretty clearly stated that it isn't an issue of mandating a subscription, because even with one the API pricing is too high for it to make sense.
There are still plenty of posts and comments on that sub. Any chance this was done by auto-moderator? Might be due to something related to how the post was worded. That dev is a pretty chill dude.
Unfortunately not, my comments were up for a day before they were removed and I was banned.
I would definitely contact the mod(s) of that subreddit and explain the situation. It may be an auto-ban based on language in the post but with some human to human context it could get sorted out.
It wasn't an auto-ban, the comments were up for about a day.
it might be an auto-ban if it got reported by a bunch of users and the automod took action.
I used Apollo for many years. Stopped using it two years ago because a known bug related to when scrolling feed suddenly you get a error that there is no more content. A lot of users reported it and what dev only does to to make more decorative content to buy. The dev was really good improving the app but I don’t know what happened there around years ago.
That problem was apparently an issue with the Reddit API. The dev tried to post the explanation any time the issue was reported because there was allegedly nothing he could do.
If true, totally seems like an API worth their asking price! /s
Ha! I was wondering why the comment to which I had replied had gone.
Banning someone for "self promoting" an open source, decentralised, democratised alternative? What a weird hill for them to die on.
Partly true, but could also be a method of coping.