Damus to be removed from App Store as zaps could be used to sell digital content | Hacker News Reader

Damus to be removed from App Store as zaps could be used to sell digital content

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35 pointssamwillis25 comments

Well, sorry freedom lovers. Your phone isn't quite free enough to run this free code.

> This would be a watershed moment:

Watershed, yes. That's a funny way of putting it.

Really, it's just too late for me to sympathize with these "alt-techbros" and whatnot. If you're willing to support a platform that restricts your ability to freely run software, you forfeit your right to resist when bad things happen. Now bad things are happening, and all of the sudden people want to meaningfully protest it. Who could have possibly seen this coming?

I didn't think leopards would eat my face![1]

[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/leopards-eating-peoples-faces...

I don't think that many people would support that iPhone users have freedom over their phone.

That said, for the time being, web apps still remain relatively free and every year new APIs bring them closer to the native ones.

I don't believe that it'll last forever.

I mean, I want to believe you. The Web would be a great content delivery platform if we could agree on common ground.

Honestly though, I've heard the whole "case for webapps" since the original iPhone launched. Apple's support of new features in Safari is painfully touch-and-go, and ultimately they have no incentive to give you a premium experience unless you pay. So now we're here, for better or worse.

No company has an incentive to give a premium experience unless people pay. That’s how businesses work.

Apple especially. They've firewalled developers from developing meaningful extensions to iOS, threaten to sue anyone who researches their systems, and will die clutching their App Store revenue rather than defer to the user's choice.

Apple could easily be incentivized to improve the App Store and first-party software if they let developers compete with them. They don't, though. It's a deliberate, arbitrary decision made by a group of people who's primary motivation is to not disturb the profit margins. You can make of that what you will, but methinks their way of computing is due in for a reckoning. Someone had to blink.

If any of this were even remotely true, Android would have blown past them easily.

The reason people choose Apple products is because they want Apple’s curation. That’s it, pure and simple. Apple is profitable because customers value this.

Those who don’t like Apple have always had plenty of options.

I choose Apple because I have more success with their first party stuff generally working well. The App Store is filled with junk so if they're "pure and simple" reason for being better is that curation, they're doing a terrible job.

The web is full of junk, and so is Android. I don’t expect Apple to eliminate apps I don’t like from the store, and I’d say Apple’s first party stuff is part of the curation. You might prefer the store was open, but that clearly isn’t a priority for you.

But you refute the GP’s other point in any case - you think their first party stuff is great, which he seems to dispute.

Hey now, I used to develop for Apple products. Life is short though, and catering to Apple's every whim is like living with a fat and lazy king who demands tribute for doing nothing. When MacOS and iOS had the confidence to show me ads, I left.

Their comment honestly resonates with me - I also paid extra for Apple products because I thought I'd get a better experience. As time goes on, that experience has not lived up to the standard it should have. Apple's insistence on cagey behavior has turned me off their ecosystem entirely for personal usage.

Their App Store could be a wild Wild West and the first party stuff would still be great, work well, and integrate with other Apple products. It has nothing to do with the App Store curation.

Sure, but that was clearly not a priority for you. For others it certainly is, and in aggregate people choose the platform with its curation.

All things being equal, if the closed store were a net negative of any significance, Android would be doing much better than it is.

Android did blow past them easily. If you live in any country of the world that isn't the United States, the overwhelming majority of your population likely uses an Android device. It's been like that for close to a decade at this point.

I'm not refuting that Apple can't do this - that's for regulators and legislators to decide, not you or me. I'm more highlighting that they've made things very hard on people for much longer than they've been shitting on a benign crypto app. One might even say that they're known for abusing their market position, at this point.

I don't know is this is a new policy, or the reviewer simply paid closer attention to this app?

Or, when this Nostr client first came out it simply did not include a bitcoin/lightning/zap functionality, and therefore it wasn't stopped in the vetting process.

In any case: anyone who wants to set up a new social media platform will have to do so in the form of a website or WASM native web app, and not in an App Store hosted app.

This could be a big problem for some other platforms that I saw on HN today, like [NON.IO](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36296695) and [ZSync](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36301337) because they also filter the quality of posts by counting non-free upvotes.

requiring any payment to go through apple has been a policy since the beginning. It's been the center of countless public discussions and debates by indie devs, large companies, and politicians. Laws are being made around this.

this is NOT NEW.

The real question is why did Damus devs think it wouldn't apply to them when even Amazon can't get around it.

More specifically, it’s any payment for digital content. Payments for physical goods and services Apple doesn’t take a cut for.

any businesses with clever workarounds for replacing IAP digital sales with "1:1 services" that can bypass Apple payment? it seems underexplored

for example in 1:1 service the agent provider might be able to also provide digital goods somehow

I do know some tricks from experience but cannot share

I can spend my Audible credits in the Kindle app, but I can't buy them inside the app.

"Credits" without a tell of where they came from is a good indicator that they can be purchased elsewhere, interesting idea over simply selling the digital goods themselves outside the store, thanks for the thought

Clever workarounds get you removed from the store.

Zaps are not payments to Damus devs. Zaps are purely P2P and non-transactional. This does seem new? When even @jack is surprised by it? Not his first rodeo, right?

nothing new

and it's not a p2p non transactional payment system. it's a system for tipping for digital goods, or donating to digital goods producers. that's the distinction you lost in your generalization.

I remember using keybase and it having crypto payments with stellar lumens. Is damus popular?

They actually had a raffle and gave away lumens to people in non-trivial amounts.

I think I still have the bitcoin I bought with lumens in a wallet somewhere, might be worth 100-150€ nowadays.

If you had a Keybase account and a lumen wallet, go check if it has a balance =)

The twitter app literally has the same tipping over bitcoin/lightning functionality built in. Also there is zero way to paywall content (or anything) within the Damus app. Literally just (the) tips. Apple and Will have a call this afternoon to discuss - hopefully logic prevails.

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