this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
1350 points (90.4% liked)
Liftoff!
4352 readers
1 users here now
A mobile client for Lemmy running on iOS and Android
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not to mention that Sync for Reddit had the same exact data advisory tag. The developer has been very open that he doesn't store or sell the data, it is just needed for the free version to work properly.
I think the issue is not with wether the dev collects data, its about the dev using google products, which do collect, store and sell data.
There are alternatives to Firebase, (i think they can even be self hosted), so its something that can be improved without affecting much the development time or other aspects.
The Dev has shown countless times that he listens to his community and is willing to make changes. I mean for fucks sake he spent untold hours completely building a new UI and still made sure the old styling was available for users who prefer the classic look.
If enough people raise a stink about Google services I'm sure he will look at alternatives.
I mean, you can't even install the pro version (without ads) unless you're deep in the ass of the Google ecosystem. Someone checked and the pro version doesn't send any tracking requests (which checks with what the developer said - the ad library is not even initialized in the pro version) so it's not that bad for me.
But the part where I have to have Play Services is a huge no-no for me. So with Sync I can choose a) have spying ads or b) have different spying ads.
Of course it has the same data advisory tag, they both have/had a paid version of the app. It needs to collect financial information for that. That's data that you have to offer voluntarily for christ sake, and then it checks whether your account is subscribed or not since lemmy itself wouldn't indicate that. Even if it didn't show ads, it would still have a data advisory tag. I can understand people who are extremely privacy obsessed online avoiding any app that collects data, even benign or optional data, just in case, but some people are treating it like sync is spyware just because it has a data advisory tag, which is ridiculous.