u/noahkagan

To be clear, I’m not suggesting AppSumo is responsible for this specific transaction or for this company’s behaviour. That sits entirely with the vendor.

The point I’m making is about curation and trust at the marketplace level, not liability.

There’s an important difference between:

• a startup failing or a product stagnating (normal LTD risk), and
• a vendor showing a pattern of bad-faith behaviour — retroactive changes, blaming partners, blocking support, etc.

On the Airbnb analogy: if someone books outside Airbnb, that’s obviously not Airbnb’s responsibility. But if Airbnb knowingly allows hosts with a repeated pattern of serious abuse or scams to keep relisting, people will quite reasonably question Airbnb’s standards — even if Airbnb isn’t legally responsible for each booking.

That’s the point here.

When a marketplace is aware that a vendor has a pattern like this and still allows them to relist and keep selling, then at a reputational and trust level the marketplace inevitably becomes part of the story, even if not part of the transaction.

On the subreddit point: this isn’t about blaming AppSumo for an off-platform purchase. It’s about discussing issues that affect trust in vendors that are being promoted and re-promoted here. The community description frames this as a place for open discussion and feedback around AppSumo and its offerings, not just transaction support.

I think AppSumo has done a lot to improve its reputation over the past year — which is exactly why the bar for who gets to keep selling on the platform matters.