MKBHD & Wallpapers.

About a week ago I saw a tweet from Marques (MKBHD) advertising a wallpapers app. For those unaware Marques is a YouTuber who reviews technology and has been doing it for a long time. I trust him on reviewing technology and ~20 million other people watch him do just the same.

So when I saw this advertisement for a wallpaper application I was skeptical because I personally don't understand why folks would need more wallpapers than what the stock application provides.

I then saw the price tag for premium features: $12/month OR $50/year

This is a guy I respect during tech reviews shelling some application to his followers that had a huge optional price tag for wallpapers. Like I continue to think about this and can't fathom who would think spending a recurring charge on wallpapers is a good idea. Like this price rivals streaming services and these are wallpapers for your phone.

I can understand supporting artists and their work, but as I glanced photos of the wallpapers a large majority just felt like instantly generated AI creations so I wasn't convinced.

I then saw folks online (Reddit) complaining about the permission requirements for this application and it looked like a serious set of permissions. Though I knew from submitting applications via work that you include one advertising library and all of these tracking permissions come along - unless you strip down your analytics to a bare minimum.

So then I started thinking - did MKBHD test his own application? If I tested my own wallpaper application and it requested location permission and more - I'd feel uneasy no matter the financial gain of such data. I mean I lose money monthly on Leaf, but it has 0 ads, 0 trackers and provides benefit to Halo players.

At this point I thought I was complaining about something when I can simply ignore it, which is true, but I had to dig further. I saw this quote from Marques (MKBHD) that showed the profit split was 50%.

We have a bunch of awesome artists over there that we are splitting profits with 50/50 and there’s already a ton of great collections of art and much more incoming...
https://beebom.com/mkbhds-panels-wallpaper-app/

It just seemed so odd to me. The app stores (Apple/Google) generally take 30% of all in-app purchases, but this profit share was 50/50. If you consider other services like Spotify or Etsy it ranges from 6% to 30%. So the infrastructure to host some images for download seemed like a relatively cheap cost per user, so the 50% cut seemed high.

So then I peeked the terms / privacy and it seemed like a ton of text for a simple application.

However, I started thinking about the regulation around a marketplace and the legal department that may surround a highly popular YouTuber and it seemed at that point like a normal amount of text.

So at this point I was ready to just ignore this and call it a day, until I spotted a GitHub repository that had a bit of fun.

 /$$      /$$ /$$   /$$ /$$$$$$$   /$$$$$$  /$$$$$$$ 
| $$$    /$$$| $$  /$$/| $$__  $$ /$$__  $$| $$__  $$
| $$$$  /$$$$| $$ /$$/ | $$  \ $$| $$  \__/| $$  \ $$
| $$ $$/$$ $$| $$$$$/  | $$$$$$$ |  $$$$$$ | $$  | $$
| $$  $$$| $$| $$  $$  | $$__  $$ \____  $$| $$  | $$
| $$\  $ | $$| $$\  $$ | $$  \ $$ /$$  \ $$| $$  | $$
| $$ \/  | $$| $$ \  $$| $$$$$$$/|  $$$$$$/| $$$$$$$/
|__/     |__/|__/  \__/|_______/  \______/ |_______/ 

Because selling out is bad

It seemed this researcher discovered that the API in the application had no authentication between free/premium wallpapers. So they just provided a script that downloaded every single wallpaper from the application for free instantly. Now I can't really support that behavior, but I can sure confirm it.

So I started just summarizing this and it felt just sour.

• An ad/privacy-invasive application for the "free usage".
• An insane cost ($12/month or $50/year) for premium wallpapers.
• A marketplace chuck full of AI images.
• An application with no security on endpoints.
• An application full of ads for every single action.

The good news I can just ignore the application, however prior to ignoring it wouldn't be fair to leave out the updates and response to this negative feedback.

It seems MKBHD is trying to course correct after a rocky launch of a product and the updates promised are being delivered one by one. I'm not interested in a wallpaper app and my journey investigating this application is over. The app may thrive or fail - I just won't know it.