this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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[–] rmayayo 243 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (17 children)

Boost dev here. There should be an Ad icon on the top right to report the ad. Not sure why it is not showing in this case. I will try to block those ads in the AdMob console. Edit: Done

[–] [email protected] 42 points 9 months ago

thanks for caring!

[–] [email protected] 34 points 9 months ago

Awesome, thank you.

[–] Sho 28 points 9 months ago

This is the stuff I come to Lemmy for. Love the quick feedback and positive approach to the situation.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago

Thanks, absolutely love the app btw, I've used the Reddit one for years and the Lemmy one is just great.

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[–] [email protected] 137 points 9 months ago (5 children)

The ads come from an ad network where there is very little visibility into what's going to be displayed in your app. And bad people also keep managing to get their ads published even though the ad network doesn't allow them

And it all ties into the whole targeted advertising, where they also make sure very few people get the bad ad, and tries to target people they think may be more susceptible to these kinds of tactics. Depending on the amount of interactivity allowed, the ad can even display two different things if it deems you too savvy to fall for it.

It's basically unescapable unless you only use apps without ads, or pay for the ad-free versions.

The whole advertising industry is sketchy, more news at 10.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Pi-hole blocks ads served by these networks just fine. Never seen an ad in Boost for Lemmy or for Reddit, though I tend to use Jerboa now that I've gotten used to it while I was waiting for Boost for Lemmy to release.

DNS based adblocking like Pihole or Adguard limits you to receiving advertising hosted by the app provider (youtube for example) which is usually better curated than third party advertising networks and less commonly found at all.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Yep, also the ads don't get initialized at all if the user buys the ad-free version (going to top all in the Lemmy Boost community should bring up the post about it). It's relatively cheap and the dev is very active with bugs and requests. The dev is developing for the Fediverse and I'm happy to support that (as well as devs for Sync, Connect, Lemmy, etc.)

I like Boost and paid for ad-Free, but a lot of other clients should work for your needs. While they might not be privacy focussed, many are open source so you can check what is going on.

My preference goes

  • Boost (not FOSS, one time payment to remove ads)
  • Connect (not FOSS, ad free)
  • Eternity (FOSS & ad free)

I uninstalled the other ones and haven't kept up with them. There may be better ones out there, these are the ones I'm keeping up with

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[–] [email protected] 129 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (6 children)

Jerboa (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid)

Voyager (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid + PWA + iOS App Store)

Thunder (FOSS. Play Store + IzzyOnDroid + iOS App Store)

Eternity (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid)

edit: formatting

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago

10/10 for Voyager, with a shout-out to Eternity too!

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[–] [email protected] 76 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Please. For the love of god, NEVER use a proprietary app to use a piece of FOSS software. I think it's kind of sad that we have this amazing FOSS social network and people use fucking proprietary software to use it.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

i use sync. there's nothing even close to the quality of the client. (The onlt client that implements material you in a fun and usable way, sync is usable one-handed)
I had been using Liftoff for a while (before switching to Sync as soon as it came out), which i quite liked but it feels a lot worse than sync

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Open-source it a better interface then.

Until it's as useful as at least Sync for Lemmy, people will use 3rd party proprietary apps

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Voyager

It's a FOSS privacy respecting Lemmy client.

It's available on Android and IOS

You can also try it as a PWA: https://vger.app

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 9 months ago

Your lemmy app has ads???

[–] Asudox 40 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Jerboa. It lacks some features, but it's the official app and it's also pretty minimalistic with its material you UI. Other than that Thunder is pretty good. They're both FOSS.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 9 months ago (18 children)

I start with whatever is on F-Droid, and narrow it down from there.

Jerboa was the only option there until recently. I see Voyager and Eternity are there now. I'll have to give them a try.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Eternity is great! free, no ads, and no lag while scrolling. it also supports swipe to go back from posts.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm so used to navigating in Eternity at this point that all other apps seem clunky and unintuitive

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I use Connect for lemmy, it's really great and ad-free.

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[–] folak 31 points 9 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (1 children)

This is why ad blockers should always be used. Small devs don't have relationships with advertisers or control over what ad networks will do.

Or you can pay once and be done with them. I think the price of a burger is not a big ask for something you use every day.

I do both.

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[–] sir_reginald 29 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (4 children)

As always, use free software. Look for Lemmy clients in F-Droid. Voyager is a good one.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 9 months ago (1 children)

https://vger.app/

voyager is great, progressive web app, or in your favorite app store.

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 9 months ago

Install the fdroid apps. Eternity is a good example of a fdroid app for lemmy

[–] [email protected] 22 points 9 months ago (3 children)

I am using Voyager & Eternity and both have no ads.

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[–] Trincapinones 22 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I use Eternity, it's a fork of Infinity for reddit

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[–] plz1 21 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)
  • Voyager for Lemmy
  • NextDNS to kill basically all 3rd party ad networks and tracking
[–] xfts 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Thunder gets regular updates and is open source and ad free.

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[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago

Thanks for the warning, switching to Jerboa.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sync Pro (paid) Jerboa (free)

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[–] Dehydrated 20 points 9 months ago

What about just not using a proprietary client for an open source social media platform? You'll find amazing FOSS Lemmy clients as well as a whole lot of other FOSS software on F-Droid. It's the best source for Android apps. Thunder is my personal favorite.

[–] Spesknight 19 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I am on Connect, loving it

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 9 months ago

Use foss apps

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Maybe I'm behind on my terms but does this count as a dark pattern?

It was my understanding that dark patterns are a thing designed to use a service in a way that they wouldn't normally intend to, like renew a subscription or leave privacy options to the benefit of the company instead of the user.

This just seems like a scam, or at best highly deceptive advertising? Like, for it to be a dark pattern it would have to actually be able to send you to some android update system, but it almost certainly isn't ever going to do that.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago

Use F-Droid, Google store is a malware vendor at this point.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 16 points 9 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 15 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Eternity. It was a FOSS Reddit client before the API stuff but they became a Lemmy client.

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[–] Thermal_shocked 15 points 9 months ago (8 children)

DNS adblocking. I don't see those ads.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Voyager, eternity, jerboa in that order

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