Comment by taoufix | Hacker News Reader

Comment by taoufix | Hacker News Reader

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I made a small app for my specific need and decided to share it with people with same interests. It stated getting traction and more and more users started using it. At first I was exited to read the 5 stars reviews and thanks. When the app got even more traction and reached +30K users, the reviews and direct emails became toxic and insulting: why doesn't the app do this? why is it free? are you selling our data? (the app is free w/o ads and with Zero permissions not even network. It's just a small sqlite database with a UI).

The I read the Flappy Bird's creator story[1], I decided to stop reading the reviews all together, it's just too much stress. I'm sure a lot of users (the silent majority) appreciate and find the app useful.

[1] https://businessideaslab.com/flappy-bird-story-dong-nguyen/

I think that this is a bit different from what the parent comment was about.

> why doesn't the app do this? why is it free? are you selling our data?

These are all valid questions, in my opinion, especially the last two. Some of them could easily be answered in a FAQ section.

And no, I almost never leave reviews, so I am not one of "them".

Yeh reading app reviews is toxic. We build a free open source/creative commons app (https://www.secfirst.org) to help people learn about digital and physical security. It's one of the biggest guides ever written about the topic, something like about 160k words in 40 different topics translated into 7 main languages. All done with volunteers.

We regularly get people giving us one star reviews and telling us the app is shit because it's not translated into Japanese, Korean, Dutch or Norwegian etc. I mean we'd love to translate it into all these languages but Norway isn't exactly the world's most dangerous country so not our main priority. We try to reach out to every user who contacts us no matter what and sometimes we send people the details about how easily to help is translate it if they can - but the usual answer is abrupt, unhelpful and dismissive.

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