
Apple does not keep the 30% commission on a refund - metafunctor
https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1288625617873694721
======
dang
The related thread from yesterday:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584).

This was a moderation failure too. We try to find out when stories are false
and downweight them or at least change their titles. We want HN to be a place
where erroneous claims, especially indignation-rousing ones, get fixed, not
amplified, and it pains me that we missed such a clear case. I admire that
people have been so proactive about correcting it, though. That is rare.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
I was actually surprised that no one else posted excerpts from the Apple
Developer Agreement[0]. There's millions of copies out there.

It clearly states that Apple is _entitled_ to do what was originally tweeted,
but, from a lot of anecdotal stories by developers that have actually
processed refunds (I am not one. I have never processed a refund), Apple does
not actually do this.

A few folks have pointed out that, even though the contract stipulates it, the
practice may be considered illegal, or at least open to court challenges;
which might be why it isn't enforced.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23992510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23992510)

~~~
jjcon
No Apple states they are entitled to not refund credit card fees (which they
would not get back) - they don’t state they are entitled to not refund the 30%
cut

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
I don't read that at all:

 _> In the event that Apple refunds any such price to an End-User, You shall
reimburse, or grant Apple a credit for, an amount equal to the price for that
Licensed Application. In the event that Apple receives any notice or claim
from a payment provider that an End-User has obtained a refund for a Licensed
Application, You shall reimburse, or grant Apple a credit for, an amount equal
to the price for that Licensed Application. In such cases, Apple will have the
right to retain its commission on the sale of that Licensed Application,
notwithstanding the refund of the price to the End-User._

 _" an amount equal to the price for that Licensed Application"_ sounds like
we're on the hook for the full nut.

 _" In such cases, Apple will have the right to retain its commission on the
sale of that Licensed Application, notwithstanding the refund of the price to
the End-User."_ Sounds like they get to keep the 30%, no matter what.

Like I said, it may not be enforceable, in the real world, but that's what the
agreement I have, says, verbatim.

~~~
DangerousPie
Isn't this about user-initiated chargebacks through the CC provider rather
than developer-initiated refunds? Or am I reading this wrong?

> any notice or claim __from a payment provider __that an End-User has
> obtained a refund

~~~
ShroudedNight
I am not a lawyer, so interpret this with lots of salt. The paragraph
describes two scenarios, then says 'In such cases'. I would interpret that to
mean that Apple requires that you allow them to retain their right to the
commission in both scenarios.

~~~
mortehu
Why say "in such cases" if you're not referring to a subset of cases?

------
outime
It's good to see that a chunk of HN (the ones who upvote/downvote, including
myself) see that HN is formed by humans and therefore it has its own biases
and that fake news aren't an external evil that can't just appear here.

That being said, if we dig a bit this also shows how Apple is being seen as a
bit of a villain by many people (again, including myself) nowadays and had no
problems believing Apple was doing this because it pretty much aligns with
their IMHO abusive practices when it comes to grabbing money from devs.

Apple will keep selling and having some bad PR isn't going to affect sales
much I guess but I can't stop thinking that some day some competitor will show
up, or some law will change and they'll be forced to lift the app store
restrictions and most of the devs will fly. Maybe it's time for Apple to start
considering reducing the greediness with the people who make their platform
attractive when these kind of news pass all filters, even in communities like
this.

~~~
machello13
> some law will change and they'll be forced to lift the app store
> restrictions and most of the devs will fly.

Why would devs leave if restrictions are lessened? Devs are there right now,
in droves, _despite_ those restrictions.

~~~
outime
With restrictions I meant if you want to distribute your apps in iOS, you must
use the App Store and pay your fee (the yearly one as well). What other option
do you have right now? None, and that's why _devs are there right now_.

~~~
lotsofpulp
The devs are there because there is no other option where there are sufficient
paying customers.

So in order to have that option, there must be sufficient paying customers,
but it can be argued that the paying customers are there because of Apple’s
restrictions.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
Offer "20% off" deals on the competing store, and Apple will be forced to
reduce their cut if they want to stay competitive.

~~~
lotsofpulp
What store? I specifically buy the elderly people in my family iOS devices so
that they are restricted to things from Apple’s App Store.

Unless someone came around and showed they have a better track record than
Apple, I wouldn’t be interested in changing. But I suspect they would be just
as restrictive as Apple is now.

Not worrying about malware and tech support is worth so much in saved time.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
You may not be interested; do you think the majority would agree?

~~~
lotsofpulp
I think the majority wants something that just works and accomplishes the task
they want. Unfortunately, malware is rampant on other devices.

------
duopixel
More than 1000 upvotes on a piece of false information[1], on a website where
people are well educated and informed. HN fell to fake news. I don't mean this
in a judgmental way, when I saw this posted I thought "that doesn't sound
right, but I guess if it has so many upvotes on HN it must be true".

It's kind of fascinating on many levels, I guess many of us put more trust on
the community rather than our gut feeling. We are in the post-truth era
indeed.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584)

~~~
pjc50
Apple's opacity leads to this kind of thing. The "rebuttal" doesn't have a
citation either. How do we know that it itself is not also fake news? Apple
_should_ have a nice clear page we can all link to that explains how this
works. But nobody seems to have found one.

Edit: no, really, this is important: we're in the middle of the lesson of
"social media can amplify things that aren't true and you should check them".
Great. So, how _do_ we verify things? What should we be doing? The counter
claim link at the top of this thread is also just a random unsourced tweet!

~~~
tonyedgecombe
It's in the terms:

 _" In such cases,Apple will have the right to retain its commission on the
sale of that Licensed Application, notwithstanding the refund of the price to
the End-User."_

~~~
voxic11
What is in the terms? That part says they can keep the commission if they want
to. But the question is do they actually keep it.

~~~
jerf
If I were writing these terms, I'd want to include that clause so that if
someone attempts to attack Apple financially by getting a lot of people
together to buy apps and then refund them, Apple would have some discretion in
terms of keeping enough money to offset the attack. It would be a tricky
situation, but at the same time, by including that clause they also make the
situation less likely to come up in the first place by making that attack
vector less appealing.

There's also some other attack vectors I can think of that this renders less
likely, like "let's get my big YouTube fanbase to all buy this one app today,
then refund it near the end of the refund window, thus pushing this app to the
top of the store at no cost to my YouTube fanbase but at cost to Apple!" This
would give Apple the cover to keep enough commission to cover the attack.
Given the known shenanigans played on the app store, this seems less like some
bizarre far-out possibility and more like something that would be a routine
thing done by sketchier app developers if the terms didn't make it a bad
proposition like this.

But in a normal day-to-day transaction, the logic works out in favor of
refunding it even if they do nominally have the contractual right to refuse to
do so.

~~~
qwertygnu
How would either of those situations (which are pretty much the same) cost
Apple _financially_? If 10,000 people buy an app for 1$ each, the creator gets
7000$ and Apple gets 3000$. When they all get refunds. The creator refunds the
7000$ and Apple refunds the 3000$...

~~~
Liquid_Fire
Apple have to pay some amount (let's arbitrarily say 1%) for processing the
payments, so in this example they would lose $100.

~~~
xxs
I doubt Apple rate is this high.

------
mabbo
I like that the original tweeter is the one loudly yelling that he was wrong.
Too often, people are too proud and ashamed of being wrong to do that.

So kudos to that guy for doing the right thing.

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
I agree.

As it turns out, there is a decade-old issue. Apple has a stipulation in their
contract that allows them to do it, but they don't actually do it. He
misinterpreted some kind of interaction.

~~~
joshstrange
I think comments like this are equally as harmful as spreading fake news. The
history revisionists/apologists.

Here is the tweet:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200729052623/https://twitter.c...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200729052623/https://twitter.com/twolivesleft/status/1288344977169235968)

Text:

> And this is minor in the scheme of things, but when a customer refunds your
> paid app, Apple doesn’t refund the 30% cut they took from you

> So you end up owing them money

Absolutely none of that tweet is correct. They don't cite the contract /at
all/, they say very matter-of-factly "Apple doesn’t refund the 30% cut they
took from you" which is 100% false.

Edit: a word

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
_> I think comments like this are equally as harmful as spreading fake news.
The history revisionists/apologists._

Be nice. That was uncalled-for.

I'm not a history revisionist, nor am I an apologist. In fact, we may have
many areas in which we agree. You immediately, and intentionally, decided to
make me an enemy, and I have no clue why.

I'll revise the comment a bit. Maybe that will make it clearer.

BTW: I took responsibility for writing an unclear comment, and fixed it.

 _THAT_ is the kind of thing we need to see more of. It absolutely stinks that
people think of every forum in the world as some kind of gladiatorial arena.

~~~
joshstrange
I would respond but you keep editing your comments to say something different
so I don't really see the point but here we go.

I'll just say this, I think you have a pretty warped view of things if being
called out of saying untrue things is the same a making someone your enemy or
brings to mind a "gladiatorial arena".

I don't hate people or think of them as enemies just because they disagree
with me or I disagree with them. If I get called out on bad behavior I reflect
and adjust, I don't come out swinging and playing the victim card.

I don't think of you as my enemy, I think of you as someone who said something
that I find to be a dangerous way of thinking/justifying and I said as much.
Intent matters and the "truth" gotten to by invalid means is a problem even if
it ends in "truth" (which again, this tweet did not even meet that bar).

~~~
ChrisMarshallNY
Actually, you did respond.

I said I agreed with promptly admitting wrong, which was what the OP was all
about. I could care less about the tweet. I revised the comment to reflect
what I meant more clearly, after reviewing it, and agreeing with you that it
could be interpreted ambiguously.

I also added that there is a legitimate issue, in that Apple has a very broad
stipulation in their agreement (did you read yours?), that actually gives them
the right to do exactly what the original tweet accused. Even though he was
wrong about the facts on the ground, he did actually highlight an issue that
has been present since the earliest days of the App Store (more than a
decade).

And, yes, you are fighting, which is completely unnecessary. I would bet that,
if _you_ (not me) hadn't come out of the gate swinging, we might have found a
lot of areas in which we could agree.

I'm actually a fairly decent chap. The chances are even that you are, as well.
The Internet tends to bring the beast out in us. I am a reformed troll. I
could have _really_ come out swinging, but I don't do that, any more. In fact,
as you can easily verify, I attach my name and reputation to everything I
post.

In any case, we're done here.

Have a great day!

------
helsinkiandrew
This is a good example of where a strong belief in something (in this case
Apple greedily taking a huge cut of developer earnings) that something that
sounds patently false is believed automatically and instantly.

Happens with people, companies, religion, and politics.

[edit: I believed it too without thinking]

~~~
sigotirandolas
And the thing here is that this tweet contained a single fact that could be
disproven with a little additional information. Now try to imagine how many
false yet popular beliefs there are in areas like politics or economics where
you can spend your entire day counter-counter-argumenting in circles.

------
sulam
At the time it made no sense as a business practice, and seemed painful enough
that I should have heard about it long before this. My immediate reaction was
"really? I'll have to see confirmation before I treat this tweet as
authoritative".

What is really amusing in hindsight was the number of people willing to pile
on and argue that this was in fact totally reasonable of Apple to be doing and
that we shouldn't be surprised or upset at all about it.

~~~
rydre
> _What is really amusing in hindsight was the number of people willing to
> pile on and argue that this was in fact totally reasonable of Apple to be
> doing and that we shouldn 't be surprised or upset at all about it._

Exactly, while I had doubts about this accusation on Apple, I was surprised
about how many people were okay with it. These people (defenders of Apple)
vote, but they're not even likely to be Billionaires (it's not wrong to be a
Billionaire if you play fair). Why do they defend such an awful practice if it
actually happened and wasn't fake news?

~~~
pjc50
> Why do they defend such an awful practice if it really happened?

(do you mean "didn't really happen"?)

Controversialists work like that. There is no position in defence of power
that people won't argue for, and have a little circle of people cheering them
on.

~~~
rydre
> _(do you mean "didn't really happen"?)_

I messed up (just edited the comment to correct), what I mean is in a
hypothetical scenario where Apple really did this, why would you defend them?

------
Ghostt8117
I am disappointed in myself that I believed this information without any
evidence. I wanted to believe it because it confirmed and amplified my bias. I
hope this gets more points than the first post.

~~~
gowld
There was evidence (chart showing negative income), but it was misinterpreted.
What is interesting is that Twitter got a lot of corrections,but HN didn't get
a bunch of iOS devs saying "No, this doesn't happen on my app" (at least not
in the dozens of comments I read).

------
cosmodisk
This will serve me,and many others on HN as a lesson on how easy it is to fall
for false information. I did read the related post yesterday and there were
lots of emotions, mainly negative. Now I don't even know whether they take the
money or not, so I'll put a question mark until proven otherwise for time
being.

~~~
bambax
But it isn't false information! It's part of the licence agreement, that Apple
chooses to sometimes enforce, sometimes not.

~~~
asutekku
If you would’ve read comments in this post thorough, you would’ve found it
most likely has to do with the payment providers and not apple itself, as
there’s nothing apple can do in that case (other than pay the difference from
their own pocket, but they have no legal requirement to do that). Thus it’s
not random.

~~~
bambax
> _most likely_

... means maybe.

Apple reserves the right to keep its commission and doesn't attach it to
payment processing issues. It can do whatever it wants, and we can only guess.

------
rexreed
I posted earlier how HN is highly susceptible to both groupthink as well as
confirmation bias [1]. Check yourself and ask yourself if what is posted is
actually true or is rather something you WISH was true, and also if what is
posted is something that you would prefer to go with the herd than to try to
run against the stampede. But humans are humans.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23846631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23846631)

------
raziel2p
The scariest part of this for me is "I don’t know where I got the idea that it
worked the way I thought it did". If it was based off of incorrect sources or
whatever I'd understand, but how can you make such a bold claim in a public
social medium and forget where the idea came from within 1-2 days?

~~~
searchableguy
Um this is how twitter works. 280 char limit. Before it was 180. The nature of
twitter wasn't ever meant to be taken seriously as a source but current media
popularized it by being lazy and sourcing from twitter.

People say all sorts of crazy things there if you follow active users on
twitter. They are quick at deleting them too.

I mean there are startups to take screenshots of tweets -
[https://pikaso.me](https://pikaso.me)

Should tell you enough.

------
91edec
Kind of scary how a random person on twitter can say something and that gets
turned into a fact.

~~~
usefulcat
Imagine the effect if multiple sources were to repeat the same false claim.

~~~
marcosdumay
Imagine it if the available sources were few, and they were all repeating the
same false claim.

------
elwell
I wonder how many of the upvoters of _this post_ similarly didn't bother fact
checking the correction. Not commenting on its veracity, however I think the
truth is somewhere in between (Apple has the right to hold onto the 30%
commission, but hasn't invoked that in practice yet).

I, for one, upvoted both threads on the basis that this is playing out as a
peculiar display of groupthink; a microcosmic martyrdom of truth tellers in
the wave of internet points.

------
tempodox
There is no such thing as a trusted source, and there never has been. Before
you act on information, always double- and triple-check, if at all possible.
Treating Twitter, of all things, as a trusted source seems especially risky.

~~~
sokoloff
Treating Twitter as a trusted source is like treating the town square as a
trusted source. Treating individual people with a proven track record who
happen to be on Twitter (or in the town square) as a trusted source is far
more reasonable.

------
Hokusai
> Apple does not keep the 30% commission on a refund

That makes sense. I worked for a big mobile games company and refunds happened
all the time.

It was a classic that people will buy in-game items and ask, int our case,
Facebook for a refund. They will keep the items and get the refund, until we
created a tool to manage refunds and that cheat saw its due end.

As to generate in-game items has zero cost, it was not a loss per se. But it
was a lose in potential earnings if it becomes common place. If Facebook has
make us pay for their % that would have been a disgrace from the beginning.

------
filleduchaos
Occam's razor strikes again.

What's more likely: That Apple has been sneaking a 60% cut under thousands of
companies' noses for a decade and they're all super chill with this because
of...what, charity? Or that a handful of business owners on Twitter are just
not great at interpreting figures?

~~~
josephcsible
Where did 60% come from? I don't think anyone ever said that.

~~~
filleduchaos
That is what would be happening if both 30% of the purchase _and_ 30% of the
refund were coming from the dev's pocket.

------
BluSyn
In response to this earlier post for those that missed it:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23987584)

------
DevKoala
I guess HN is susceptible to the same issues plaguing other online
communities. I don’t know why I thought it would be different here.

------
the-dude
Are we sure this is not a babylonic mistake?

Original take was 'customer refund', which I interpreted as a 'chargeback'.

A refund and a chargeback are very distinctive things.

------
josefresco
The rush to clear Apple's name, and the inflated indignation surrounding this
mistake is embarrassing. Tesla is the only other brand where I see this
behavior. I don't understand the evangelism of brands by people with seemingly
no direct connection. The dude was wrong (Edit: turns out technically he
wasn't wrong, Apple just "chooses" to not enforce it), get over it, Apple
doesn't need your help - they have an army of attorneys who can squash any
legitimate threat to their empire.

~~~
yalogin
That’s an odd take, I think you are looking at it wrong. IMO, this is the
hacker news community getting embarrassed. After all this is a community of
entrepreneurs, where everyone has an app and many multiple, on the App Store
and so we must have known how it works. No one is redeeming Apple here, if
anything I am thinking how easy it is to fall into this groupthink hole and
not even bother to check because “we” have to rail against someone because of
perceived/alleged wrong doing against the whole community.

~~~
josefresco
> this is the hacker news community getting embarrassed

Exactly! Both posts are showing how reactionary and ignorant these supposedly
brilliant entrepreneurs & engineers can be. At least on this thread, the
second highest voted thread actually explains the issue clearly without
hyperbole.

------
y7
Apparently it's still in the developer agreement you have to sign in order to
be allowed onto the App Store [1]. Apple can't really blame people for
spreading misinformation if the only reason this isn't true is that they
usually decide not to enforce the clause.

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23992510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23992510)

~~~
carlmr
It's not misinformation if it's part of the developer agreement.

~~~
sbuk
It’s misinformation if the clause isn’t understood by the individual sharing
it.

~~~
carlmr
That doesn't invalidate my statement. I made it contingent on the fact that it
is in the agreement. You should take this up with OP.

------
leptoniscool
How did almost no one on HN fact check this? Groupthink at work?

------
hboon
It has been like this since day 1 — the developer agreement says Apple has the
optional to retain their 30%, but in practice, I have not heard of anyone
hitting it.

------
sadfev
Lmao! Some guy “thought” Apple doesn’t refund the commission and HN and
Twitter and reddit had complete meltdown!

As some of the comments point out here, people who tried to correct the claim
with data from their experience or cite directly or indirectly Apple, they
were downvoted to oblivion.

If HN isn’t guarded against fake info, I guess no one should be expected to.

------
adverbly
Another one who fell for the fake news right here.

Part of me wishes there was a better way to model retractions, corrections,
and certainty of claims within social media platforms.

I almost feel like by default a post or tweet should be marked as
uncertain/not serious, and in order for someone to mark it as certain, they
require some form evidence like a link or a picture.

Then people browsing on the platform should by default only see posts made
with certainty unless they manually select to view uncertain or unserious
posts.

This might also stop the community backlash when someone says something stupid
and people take them too seriously and start a flame war over it.

For those browsing in serious mode, if one user has their evidence discredited
too often then they lose privileges and rights on the serious platform.

------
pk_kinetic
So does Apple keep the 30% or not? It’s too much information for my brain to
process.

~~~
criddell
They reserve the right to keep it but in practice they do not.

~~~
josefresco
This is even worse IMO.

------
umeshunni
It's almost like there was some incentive for someone to spread false
information about a company's practices on the eve of a congressional
testimony about the company's practices.

------
rexreed
As a side note, in my experience Paypal does keep their transaction fees even
when processing a refund. How does this behavior differ from what people were
incorrectly accusing Apple of doing?

~~~
josephcsible
Three reasons:

1\. Apple has a monopoly on sales of iOS apps. If PayPal does something you
don't like, you can leave them for their competitor and still keep providing
the same products and services to your customers. If Apple does something you
don't like, you need to either put up with it or abandon your iOS customers.

2\. PayPal's fee is an order of magnitude less than Apple's fee.

3\. PayPal usually has actual costs when someone buys and refunds something,
since most consumers don't keep a balance in their PayPal account. Apple
usually doesn't, since a lot more consumers do keep a balance in their iTunes
account (from, e.g., gift cards).

------
neximo64
People did mention it but then you get all 'citation needed' and get downvoted
or plainly flat ignored. So much so the outrage is heard more than the fact.

------
ffggvv
this was believable to me specifically because platforms like audible/kindle
actually do this for book sellers. same with payment processors

------
code4tee
A good lesson to all to fact-check what you read. Especially if your source of
news is some random guy on Twitter.

------
kanobo
When I saw the news yesterday I did think it was fishy because I have never
successfully gotten a refund for a broken app store purchase from Apple
before. I assumed returns weren't ever given so how could there possibly be a
refund commission policy?

------
wlesieutre
Glad to be corrected! That would have been a bonkers policy.

Someone quoted an Apple contract that appeared to indicate this was a real
Apple's policy, which I also found sourced on TechCrunch:
[https://techcrunch.com/2009/03/25/apples-iphone-app-
refund-p...](https://techcrunch.com/2009/03/25/apples-iphone-app-refund-
policies-could-bankrupt-developers/)

 _> In the event that Apple refunds any such price to an end-user, You shall
reimburse, or grant Apple a credit for, an amount equal to the price for that
Licensed Application. Apple will have the right to retain its commission on
the sale of that Licensed Application, notwithstanding the refund of the price
to the end._

But I'm unable to find that on Apple's current site, so hopefully it's been
removed. TechCrunch's link to the referenced document is on "docstoc.com" and
no longer exists.

------
osrec
I am still not happy with the 30% cut though. It is really rather high.

------
jason0597
I am now ashamed that I upvoted the previous HN submission. I wish I could
take back that upvote, but unfortunately too much time has passed since then.

From now on I will be more careful about what I upvote.

------
tus88
> I don’t know where I got the idea that it worked the way I thought it did

Hold on...so where did he get it? Surely it wasn't a figment of his
imagination?

------
bryanrasmussen
Aside from all this I would think a commission on a charge that was then
refunded would be illegal in a lot of jurisdictions.

------
atarian
The other lesson here is before you blast someone on Twitter, double-check
your math.

------
pcunite
Whenever I try to correct falsehoods here, I get down-voted into oblivion. HN
should take a good long look at itself.

------
google234123
Love to see fake news upvoted on HN. I figured it was most likely nothing more
than Apple hate.

~~~
unethical_ban
Love to see an imperfect, community moderated site calmly admit and accept
retractions from people, which is a higher standard than some of the most well
known "news"rooms in the country.

------
krick
Ok, now this is funny.

------
dekhn
Thanks, twitter.

------
jasode
_> More than 1000 upvotes on a piece of false information_

Not only upvoting the story but _also downvoting_ posters to minus-12 who
tried to counteract it with correct information:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hn_check](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=hn_check)

[ footnote: his profile was -12 at the time I wrote the comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hn_check](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=hn_check)
]

[ another edit:]

Sorry for confusion. I wasn't trying to say that _one_ comment got downvoted
to -12. His 2 top-level comments ( _" and this submission is just farcically
wrong"_ and _" This isn't correct at all."_) ... were at various levels of
grey so those 2 comments contributed -4 or -5 or more to the -12. I do agree
his tone (especially the [dead] comments) contributed to negative scores but
it can simultaneously be true that downvoters thought he was incorrect.

This was how his downvotes looked early this morning:
[https://imgur.com/a/GuTffzP](https://imgur.com/a/GuTffzP)

The top-level comments have since been upvoted so they are no longer greyed
out.

~~~
fermienrico
This is scary. And should scare everyone.

We need to remove downvoting temporarily for next 6 months. See how things pan
out.

Cancel culture. Dissent and attack on free speech. Smearing of truth. People
are afraid to speak up. Chilling effect.

@dang - this is urgently needed. It’s raising alarm bells like no other to me.

~~~
pjc50
Counterpoint: downvoting is how Hacker News has maintained a comparatively
high quality focused discussion while having only one full time moderator.
It's not without its disadvantages - certain things will get instaflagged off
the front page, especially "sexism in tech" stories. But it's like a firewall.
If you don't have one, you get pwned eventually.

Occasionally you get "Boston Bomber" moments, and something true gets
downvoted. That is on the poster to figure out why and how to present it in a
way that will be accepted.

(I have 60k karma, so I know how to play ranked competitive HN, but even I
still get downvoted occasionally if I'm lazy about sourcing or needlessly
confrontational)

(edit: first downvote received in less than thirty seconds. Walked into that
one, I suppose. Now leaving the edit window at +3. Sorry, +8. You're not
really supposed to threadsit your own comments like this, but since we're
talking about the voting system I thought I'd mention it)

~~~
KingOfCoders
"quality focused discussion"

If you go against the grain of HN on Elon Musk, Tesla, India or the US (and
many other topics) then your comment, like this one, is tanking. Which also
shows as many regulars from 5 years ago have left, I seldom see someones
comments I recognize.

So I do object your argument.

Comments are good to get some opinions on a topic if you dont know about the
topic of the linked post. I still read topics therefor.

~~~
smichel17
> I seldom see someones comments I recognize.

I was not around for the early days of HN, and I recognize certain posters by
their usernames. Here's a few off the top of my head (I am able to give a
short description of each, but that's more work than I want to put into this
comment). Also note I may misspell since this is from memory: Bytecode-dev,
DoreenMichelle, ChrisMarshallNyc, Arathorn. This tends to happen when the
person focuses on one topic in their posts, like bytecode-dev and python (and
I hope at some point, myself and funding FLOSS, but maybe I comment too widely
for that). There's more people; the point is not necessarily that I can
regurgitate their names, but that I'd recognize them if I saw them (for
example, I'm blanking right now on Drew from SourceHut's username, but I'd
absolutely recognize it on sight.

~~~
pjc50
Every now and again I wonder whether something like "reddit enhancement suite"
would be useful for HN. It probably already exists. The ability to tag
usernames with your personal opinion of them and reminders of their place in
the community.

------
coding123
This is what I suspected the entire time lol.

------
gridlockd
It's misleading either way.

The fact that Apple reserves the right to keep the commission is _very old_
news:

[https://www.imore.com/apple-charging-developers-100-app-
refu...](https://www.imore.com/apple-charging-developers-100-app-refunds)

I have heard anecdotes that, at least in some instances, Apple _did_ keep the
commission:

[https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/50181](https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/50181)

That might of course be an assumption, not based on proper accounting.

