For people afraid that Threads will "steal" your data / exploit it? Do you know that posting public posts, on a non private instance allow anyone to do so? Literally anyone can retrieve all your public posts and do whatever with them. Meta could do the same, and they don't need Threads for that. I really don't get the point.
I'm honestly a bit taken aback by some of the proponents of #Threads
Not by them carrying water for #Meta mind you, that's their prerogative, more so by the way they go about it
I've seen the most strained analogies and the most contorted arguments being uttered by people that I know are too smart and too honest to utter things that are so incongruous with their own standards of intellectual honesty
Perhaps its just a forced attempt to avoid having to say that they like it, simply because they like it?
Whatever the case, suggesting that #Meta's data collection via #Threads is comparable to data collection by a Mastodon instance or app is just silly
One doesn't even dare to operate within the EU and has a laundry list of collected data on their privacy nutritional label in the App Store and the other doesn't have those issues
Comparing the Fediverse to a mall that needs "anchor stores" also falls flat on its face, when we're talking about the digital equivalent of a Walmart, and we know what the effects of a Walmart are on the other smaller stores in the area
The only strong argument I've seen in favor of #Meta's #Threads is that it could make things more accessible to the mainstream crowd and the marginalized
Some people don't see that as a positive, but I don't necessarily have anything against it (yet)
The main concern is a variant of the embrace, extend, and extinguish approach, where #Meta embraces activitypub/maactivitypubend it by adding or promoting new (proprietary) features not supported outside of #Threads and subsequently extinguish activitypub/mastodon by becoming the de facto standard due to market share and competition not being able to support the new extensions
A softer version of this is one that leads to control of the standards like Google does with Chrome
The downside would be that it would kill off Mastodon and perhaps even the ActivityPub protocol
It’s not about concerns re: more or less successful, it’s about concerns re: EEE and #Meta using their weight to kill off Mastodon after it has outlived its use
If #Threads launched tomorrow as a straight up Twitter clone isolated from Mastodon or ActivityPub and its more successful (which would be likely) than Mastodon, then you don’t hear me complaining
Not sure how much more I can add without repeating myself
#Meta launching #Threads and being more successful on its own merits, or dare I say, even be better than Mastodon (successful ≠ better) is not the same to me as #Meta executing an embrace, extend, extinguish strategy
One is (more) merit based and the other is based on throwing around one’s weight
FOSS/non-FOSS is irrelevant to me, I also took issue with MS’ EEE strategies which didn’t always involve FOSS projects
Lots of people here seem to want this place to be like some version of a shopping mall - a place we can hang out together, but with little niches everywhere.
I think this is a pretty good idea, but I feel like it's worth remembering that most shopping malls without large anchor stores quickly die - because then it's just another strip mall.
Students are such grifters. Why should I pay for your student loans? Make better choices. Get a job! Anyway, can't stay and chat, off to meet my billionaire buddies for a fishing trip in my honor on an otherwise unoccupied (and therefore worth $0) private jet flight to laugh about forgiven PPP-loans
I released the final update to Apollo for Reddit! 🥹 It tidies up things for the closure later today, adds some really cool easter eggs, and lets you migrate your pixel pals from Apollo to the separate Pixel Pals app, which also unlocks an Apollo Pixel Pal so he can live on ❤️
Apollo has an opt-out sub refund screen out. Since I unfortunately know, first hand, all about this process I'll say this is all incredibly stressful. If you ever had a sub for Apollo, even if you uninstalled it and deleted Reddit, go check it out and at least consider it.
It's probably only a few $s for you but those $s get multiplied by 10s of thousands of subs and end up being real money straight out of Christian's pockets.
There’s but a tinge of a kernel of truth in there somewhere: namely liability for services yet to be rendered, which mind you, nobody is disagreeing with
The disagreement lies with the armchair accounting done by this commenter
Looks like this is going to be a🧵so bear with me
For starters it doesn’t make sense for most indie developers to use the accrual based accounting method, almost all devs will use a cash based accounting method
And in doing so, will dutifully pay income tax over all the amounts reported the 1099-Ks (or local equivalents) Apple provides to both the developer and the tax authorities.
And as you probably know, there is no unearned revenue in a cash based system.
But never mind that, say for the sake of argument you felt compelled to complicate things for yourself by adopting an accrual based system for the sole purpose of tracking liabilities.
Congratulations, you complicated things for yourself with no benefit to speak of.
Why? Because Apple doesn’t give you insight into individual transactions to track the liabilities that come with it.
You get a lump sum on your bank account, a breakdown of currencies that lead to that sum, and that’s pretty much it.
Sure they do provide a separate module in which you can track sales, but it’s separate and can’t be reconciled with the amount you get deposited on your account because of discrepancies in between the two in how things are tracked.
The main issue being, as it was explained to me by Apple anyways, when a transaction settles.
So I could see in the analytics that product1 was sold at $5 on 6/1/2023, but because the transaction might not settle until 6/4/2023, it might not be accounted for in the sum of money I receive on 7/6/2023.
In short: you can’t even properly track these liabilities even if you wanted to
There’s also the matter of why cash based accounting makes more sense in most cases: because there’s almost never a deferred expense and the terms of the App Store are designed in such a way that all transactions are final, come hell or high water.
The reason for this is that the sale legally doesn’t pertain to a service to be rendered, rather it pertains to licenses being sold for applications that are provided “as is” & “as available”, without any warranty of any kind.
6/
(Again no one is arguing the moral and perhaps even legal obligations to provide for refunds, just explaining the circumstances. Clearly the developer in question and Apple, the drafter of these terms, are of the opinion that refunds should be provided.)
As such these circumstances where a (pro rated) refund needs to be provided are extremely rare, especially in bulk like this.
This is generally not considered to be a problem because even for corporations that do track unearned revenue as a liability, it’s extremely rare to have to provide a refund to all customers at the same time.
If it was accepted practice to set aside that money then they wouldn’t report it on their balance sheet under cash and cash equivalents in addition to reporting it as a liability, but instead list it as an escrow account under assets or perhaps as restricted cash.
9/
Lastly, there’s the matter that in some jurisdictions (don’t know about Canada) sole proprietors (like the dev in question) and SMLLCs aren’t even allowed to use anything but a cash accounting system due to the likelihood of errors by using a more complex accrual system.
So to sum it up: yes there’s definitely a philosophical liability and perhaps even a legal one depending on how well Apple’s terms hold up
But nobody is disagreeing that refunds should be provided if they’re not waived.
The rest about the accounting of things is impractical if not outright nonsense
And it’s still coming out of pocket and will probably hurt like that, even if technically it was money received for something the dev isn’t able to provide anymore
I still have “Find alternative bookkeeping software” on my todo list from two years ago because every year during tax season QuickBooks frustrates the shit out of me because transactions simply disappear without rhyme or reason
Even if all these dummies were right and you and Christian were gazillionaires, the two of you couldn’t pool enough money together to make me consider taking on that responsibility 😜