this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I, too, love intrusive tracking permissions and ads.

Oh, wait... no I don't.

[–] misterbassman 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just pay to remove the ads then, this disables all of that

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Definitely worth the 20 USD

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You want free. You want no ads. You want sustainable. You want a fairy tale.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

... They said, on the ad free, FOSS free, free as in beer free, constantly updated and sustained platform.

Posted from my free, ad free, constantly updated, 'fairy tale' Android App.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

But actually not free as in free beer. Someone is paying to sustain these instances.

Edit: this is the 2nd time I've seen the phrase "free as in free beer" today and decided to look it up because I hadn't really taken notice of it before. I retract my statement and apologize. You used it perfectly and TIL, so thank you.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Upvoted not because you're right, but because you realized you were wrong and will hopefully inspire others to look up the meanings behind phrases they read on the internet.

I also needed a refresher.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

You can't grow if you can't admit to yourself that you're wrong some of the time.

(งツ)ว

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Don't get ahead of yourself about sustainability. Let's see how long free ad-free at scale lasts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

~~To be fair, the platform is not free, the instance admins pay for it. Also to be fair my instance currently only costs $7 a month, but that's more than nothing~~.

I hadn't heard free as in beer free before, apologies, I was just being a pedantic ass.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Pedantic Ass is my middle name, so no worries!

I can't hold it against a developer for wanting to be compensated for their time. It's totally fair to want to get paid for your work. But there are already a number of growing apps that support the FOSS ideals of Lemmy so everything I've been seeing with Sync has just left a bad taste in my mouth.

[–] Cabrio 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Funded by an Open Source grant by NLNet

Just because you think something is free doesn't mean it is.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Just because something receives funding doesn't mean it isn't free. I understand development has costs. Hosting has costs. But nobody is extorting payment for hosting or developing lemmy. As an end user, the service is free to use. That's obviously what I'm referring to.

[–] Cabrio 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Until the grant runs out and new funding needs to be found. And when socialised funding become untenable they will turn to the users or the corporations. Nothing is free.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Asking for donations is, again, different than extortion. There's a stark difference between a splash screen asking for funding to continue providing a free service and forcing ads and tracking in exchange for cash to operate on said FOSS platform.

[–] Cabrio 2 points 1 year ago

Who said anything about extortion? We're talking about the service being free, just because you're not the one paying for it doesn't make it free.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Use a different app, nobody's forcing you to use Sync.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Where was that implied at all?

Half my feed is filled with posts about Sync so I decided to finally respond to one. It was a popular app on Reddit for a reason, I'm sure, and I'm simply expressing my opinion on inviting ads and intrusive tracking to this platform.

I'm happily using Connect after using Jerboa for a month. Both work fine and Connect isn't perfect but it's been developed quicky with a lot of changes for user feedback, collects 0 data, has no ads, and offers the most important feature for me - the ability to filter keywords and block instances.

[–] moitoi 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where was that implied at all?

Reading all these threads about Sync makes me think about fanboys. The critics aren't welcome.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It was a snarky comment and I replied in kind. Criticism is fine but I like Sync and don't go around putting down other apps. I just use the one I like and support the developer.

[–] TheAlbacor 4 points 1 year ago

Absolutely agree. Connect has come a long way since I left reddit when RIF died.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Wait what?

What has been added vs sync pro for reddit?

I was ready to drop a bunch of money to support the dev, but not if the app is loaded with tracking bullshit

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The tracking is done by the ad SDK, not the app itself. The dev said the ad SDK will not be initialized if you purchase the one time ad removal option or subscription, so there will be no tracking at all. I actually confirmed this myself from my Adguard logs. No requests to ads and analytics domains after purchasing the subscription.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

Nothing, same model as sync for reddit except no separate app available for pro or dev

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I mean, it's not like Threads but for me anything more than 0 data collection is too much. I saw it linked in another post so I can't say exactly but you should be able to see specifically by finding it on your app store.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To be fair, the comments and posts you leave are technically being collected for display across the lemmyverse. In that sense, there's never going to be a zero data collection Lemmy client. Still, Liftoff currently has my vote. A decent little FOSS fork of Lemur, I believe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Indeed, for better or worse nothing here is private. My instance database has all user activity stored even from other instances, such is the nature of ActivityPub.

[–] armrods 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sync for Lemmy doesn't have trackers

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
[–] armrods 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

KNOWN TO COLLECT

It doesn't mean it's collecting, DDgo is the worse app to do this, use the Exodus web

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You said there are NO trackers and I see 146 tracking attempts. It doesn't matter how much data they collect, what you said is not right. Even the dev said that trackers are disabled when you get the ad free version which implies that trackers do exist otherwise. I have no horse in this race but it's hard to have a discussion when people use such definitive and inaccurate statements.

[–] armrods 0 points 1 year ago

There's no trackers