this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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[–] pickledpoops 95 points 1 year ago (2 children)

And just like that, all the other lemmy clients mean nothing to me. Just the handling of media posts is next level compared to the other guys.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That's what I thought, but not keen on it having ads/subscription model. I'd be happy to pay one off but that isn't available (at least yet). I understand the guy needs to eat, but right now I for me personally there isn't a value add vs. the FOSS clients.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Remove ads option, not Ultra(subscription). $20 is a bit steep at first glance but... I used the reddit version for years. Gonna be gladly paying it once my Google Rewards account gets a bit closer.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It was something like $3.89 for the pro back in the days.

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

Sync Pro for Reddit cost $4.99 and had 100,000+ downloads. Total active Lemmy users is probably less than 100,000 users right now, and only a small fraction of them might consider buying a Lemmy app, so the price hike is understandable.

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

4.99 was when he raised the price. It was cheaper.

I understand the fact Lemmy has a smaller user basse. The new price is a bit too much. With a small user base, the competition is greater.

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

And at the beginning, it was like 1$. When you have the full history, it looks like another raise of the price.

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

I can't stand ads or subscriptions. However sync has a one time purchase ad removal. To me it was worth it to support the development and make my lemmy experience more enjoyable.

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

As soon as I think of it as helping a dev out vs simply purchasing an app, it makes the price on things like that much easier to swallow (especially knowing it’s going to a person and not into some corporate bank account). I use Memmy for iOS myself and there isn’t a paid version of any sort yet, so I made sure to donate $20 to the dev as a thank you.

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

Yeah, I mean LJdawson needs to eat too. And $20 to support a small software dev (it's literally just him) in return for... how many hours of scrolling? Seems fair to me.

Plus, IIRC he's said he won't be turning on the trackers anyway.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Not sure if it got updated, but at least I have one lff lifetime subscription possibility in the settings

It's pretty expensive though

[–] [email protected] 22 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I, too, love intrusive tracking permissions and ads.

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

[–] [email protected] 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] 14 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] 20 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] 6 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.

[–] [email protected] 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] 9 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.

[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 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] 21 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.

[–] [email protected] 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] 1 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.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

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

[–] 9488fcea02a9 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.

[–] can 9 points 1 year ago

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

[–] [email protected] 5 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] 9 points 1 year ago

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] 5 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)
[–] [email protected] 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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

There's no trackers