Advertising software in the MPU forum

Software
21

Just saw this on one of the “dodgy” sites I’m frequenting :slightly_smiling_face: as a possible policy.

Blatant self-promotion by accounts focused solely on promoting their own content is prohibited. This includes linking to social media for likes or follows and direct links to sales, crowdfunding, or auction sites. Content creators may share relevant projects if they provide value to the community and engage beyond their own posts. Persistent offenders will have links removed and may face bans.

Frankly, I wouldn’t allow multiple strikes until you’re out. I’d remove the posts right away but keep the accounts, as long as they don’t repeat the offense, then the account goes.

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22

So I see that we have these Badges that might be useful to restrict who can post these adverts. One of them is Anniversary, where you have to be a member for at least a year with 1 post. A real spammer probably wouldn’t wait a year to post their spam.

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23

Even with a separate category, policing that would be a nightmare for the admins. If left alone it will be a chaos. There are other sites where the developers can promote their products.

This is one of the best forum and I do not wish this turn into another Reddit. If the product gains popularity it will definitely show up in MPU.

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24

lol

…20 characters

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25

I wonder whether that works.

We have a category AI that I blocked, but I still see so many posts about AI…

It would require very tight moderation to make sure that apps are only advertised in the dedicated category.

Unfortunately feedback to a spam report sometimes takes days here.

Maybe forum members with specific badges can help with this kind of moderation?

26

i am one of those who never posted but always followed this forum. My brother too, we always have discussions in person about things we read on MPU but yes we don’t participate. I am sure more people is like this and probably the admins can tell you about it from the stats.

But the point stands. There should be a separate category. So that only people who are interested in these posts visit it.

I honestly thought the app i posted would be interesting to many of you. But i am also as a developer tired of hearing vibe-coded this, vibe coded-that which is the new go-to answer now. Many devs use AI tools and it’s fine for certain aspects, as long as it’s your own code and you understand every line of it. Anyway, to not get out of topic here, the best solution would be probably a subcategory or a completely different one for software showcases.

Cheers!

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27

Two days ago, I started a topic about Bloom. I honestly never had heard of this app. I am not affiliated with the developer. I have been a member of this community since it launched back in the summer of 2018. One answer I received in the topic (rightfully so) was that the app already was mentioned before in the MPU community. Well, I did a search for Bloom, and it did not show up when I wrote the new topic. I searched again with different parameters after getting the feedback that the app already was mentioned, and it did show up (not as a topic, but it was mentioned in a few posts). Well, although I read quite a lot over here, it was new to me. And when I am looking at “my” Bloom topic today, I apparently was not alone about not knowing the app beforehand. Would I have launched that topic today, after reading this about “advertising software”? Maybe, not. Because to some degree, I did exactly that: I basically advertised Bloom, a software I did not know before.

In December, we had this post of quite a young London-based developer who launched an awesome browser for the iPad early this year. He came here because he wanted an honest opinion about his app. We were not sure about the post (including myself). But the browser is legit, not simply vibe-coded, and it is apparently quite successful in the app store. The developer chose this community because he had an honest interest in what this grumpy community (just kidding :slight_smile: ) would comment about his app.

Yesterday, there was this post about another app. I have read the post, but I did not try the app. I was not sure about the post; then again, the post did not look as plain spam (my two cents). Then again - the post was flagged by somebody, and it has been dealt with. Apparently, it worked. I guess? I do not think that any rule will change anything. Spammers will spam. We already have the option to flag posts. And somebody will look over it eventually. And there is a rule about selling stuff, spam, and more. Preventing new users completely from sharing interesting stuff (via a rule) will not stop spammers. But it will stop new users with good intentions that maybe should not be stopped? I don’t know.

A community without new input is… Well… Being somebody who is in his eighth year in this community: a lot has been written and talked about. It is normal that I do not discover that much new stuff these days over here. I like reading about new things and I don’t mind ignoring content that is not of interest to me. And if there is an issue, the post can be flagged.

Back in the old days of the internet, newsgroups were a thing. They still are around, but it is a niche these days. Participating in those newsgroups was not easy: I tried doing so while learning PHP. Not a good idea. :slight_smile: Apparently, I was too stupid to learn PHP; everything already had been explained somewhere and I just had to read. What is so difficult doing so? :wink: I get the anger and the reactions back then, but it only led to one thing: I did not participate in those newsgroups any longer and I tried to learn my stuff differently. And yes, I succeeded.

My two cents: there is no real solution to this “problem”. I get the frustration about advertising and spam, though.

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28

that’s a very good take. Legit posts about apps might get flagged, which makes me prefer the separate categorization of such posts. So many people are worried about vibe coders, that have no idea what they are doing and it’s a legit concern. But they might just flag everything because of this.

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29

I block that category as well. However, if a post is written about AI but the poster categories it as ,for example, software, I will see it. Otherwise, I don’t see any post from the AI category.

30

But that is not the same as advertising an app. You wrote a great post about an app you use and why you use it. This is very different from, “Check out my new app” with a link to purchase. The general comment so far seems to be not to restrict coversations about apps, but blatant app advertising. There is enough advertising elsewhere and as has already been mentioned that in the middle of a thread about a topic a post wil pop up, “Hey, I’ve just released an app that makes this easier, I would love you feedback” with a link. It adds nothing to the conversation or addresses anything in the thread. It’s just an advert.

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31

We have this in r/macapps and you mentioned yourself how it is going there. There is a minimum communtiy karma before you can post and most of vibe coders you mentioned before are ignoring this or promote their app in comments till they get the karma and then post their stuff. This leads just to massive work for mods.
Now the difference to r/macapps is that there it is allowed to promote, it is one of the main themes for the subreddit.
I wouldn’t want it to be this way here. Software discussions in this forum are always about how something works for someone and about use cases and about alternatives. IHMO as others have stated promotions should be forbidden for new accounts for at least some months…
As you say, once the dam has breached you can’t stop it anymore.

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32

I might not be with the majority here, but I don’t mind the current amount of posts showcasing new apps. Yes, it might get worse. But for the time being I don’t think it is very worrying.

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33

This is, to me, really a very difficult issue.

I suspect we would all agree that we don’t want a bunch of poorly conceived, poorly implemented, me-too apps posted here, and certainly not a bunch of spam postings that are scam or phishing attempts. However, there are also a lot of smart folks out there, some already members of this community, others not, who come up with an app that many of us mind find useful and worth exploring. I don’t see it as a good idea to suppress the latter.

Further, as “Mac Power Users,” we are, perhaps by definition, the ideal group to “kick the wheels” on an idea and its implementation - and perhaps by extension, have the opportunity the shape the direction of a new app or perhaps indie developer.

I haven’t personally found the amount of these postings to be bothersome - yet; I agree that it would be bad for the community for such postings to overwhelm the discussions that have been the hallmark of the MPU forum thus far.

My opinion, for what it is worth, would be a separate category for such postings, with the site’s rules clearly stating that postings will be deleted from other areas, and repeated offenders warned and then banned. For a developer who wants to reference their own app in response in another thread, they could post about their app in the appropriate category and provide a link to said post in their reply elsewhere, to keep things clean.

Non-commercial scripts and code snippets would be excluded from this policy. Here is refer to some of my own postings of a bit of AppleScript, Python, Swift, etc as solutions to specified problems or descriptions of workflows, to continue our tradition of posting solutions to problems that others may also be experiencing.

The category for app postings would benefit from having a few moderators who can help weed out spam and so forth. I don’t think we can / should rely on the admins (eg David, both Stevens) as they have more than enough on their plates supporting this community. I am sure there are others who would be more than willing to donate their time to this task.

My (somewhat greater than) 2 cents.

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34

And that’s fine! There’s a big difference between a community member drawing attention to an app that’s new—or even just new to them—and a drive-by developer hawking their wares.

I think it’s also fine to start a new thread on an app that might have been mentioned in another thread two years ago. There might have been new developments in the interim, or the new thread might offer a deeper view into the app’s features, or whatever.

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35

It seems one discomfort behind this thread was the thought of someone asking for money for an app that a robot built – Claude Code or any of the growing number of vibe coding tools. The reality is that there has been automation in the background of app development for decades, and increasingly so as the tools grew more sophisticated. There was a time in the 70s or so where engineers transitioned from writing assembler code to using optimizing compilers. That sort of automation caused tsuris for some – until it became a non-issue through widespread use.

The vibe coding thing is not the same, but also not that different in the emotional reaction.

There’s also a concern, I think, about security and sloppiness. We’ve all experienced sloppy apps from the App Stores, I’m certain. Security is a real concern, but on the other hand as a general consumer of software I have no idea if the apps I buy have security risks unless macOS / iOS tell me they do.

For myself, I don’t like being handled for money by my fellows on a forum like this, so shunting that kind of posting elsewhere is fine for me. But, consumers in the past came to terms with the changes in tooling, and now we’re all going to need to come to terms with the current trend in authorship. I’m sure there are many more interesting threads to come on that topic.

Katie

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36

The primary concern appears to be a potential wave of self-serving posts from developers with little or no prior activity here promoting their own apps.

Now that it’s been discussed, let’s see what happens. This thread may not stop those who haven’t read it from barging in and spamming, but this forum tends to be welcoming. I bet those situations can be handled with grace unless it becomes a distraction.

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37

I have no experience with coding or programming, so I am speaking out of my league, but I thought your comments were insightful and provided a good perspective on vibe coding. As to promoting apps, I understand your discomfort with being solicited on the forum. In general I agree. I am comfortable with current, active members sharing an app they have created, but I agree that outright sales pitches belong elsewhere. We do not want individuals dropping in merely to hawk their wares.

Mainly, I wanted to say I appreciated your post! :slightly_smiling_face:

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38

I suggest whatever criteria or policy ISMH or members create should rely on members flagging posts, to make moderators lives less hectic.

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39

Thanks. We like sharing our creations with the community, too :beers:

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40

That sounds rather dumb on the developer’s part, but I don’t see how that’s a complaint against his original post. He (or she?) actually went to the trouble of signing up for an account to provide a possibly very relevant answer to someone’s problem.

Disclaimer - I’m a long time developer myself (41 years on the Mac) and have occasionally posted about my product here in the context of a conversation. I haven’t had any complaints about that so far. (I won’t mention the product name since that’s not relevant to this discussion.) I hope I would notice a DM sent to me on this forum, but if you really wanted to get in touch with me about my product the best way would be to contact me directly through my web site (which also has a forum, and there is also an email address). There are a lot of different forums and social media sites and it’s pretty much impossible for a small developer to keep on top of all of them.

If someone just hops on here and makes a new post saying “here’s my new software”, well I can’t imagine that’s going to be well received. Certainly not something I’m going to try. But if I see an existing thread that seems relevant, then I would definitely consider mentioning my product, and have done so a few times over the years (I joined this forum almost immediately when it was set up, though I never was in the Facebook group).

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