According to the tracking scanner Exodus (can be found on F-Droid), which keeps an updated database on trackers and runs your installed app against its register, you can track what apps are tracking you and clues of how. Saw that Boost is tracking me and uninstalled it and went straight to Jerboa. Jerboa is pretty similar to good ole’ RedditIsFun-app and easy to use, so I am personally recommending it.

From F-Droid:

Exodus (Exodus show you trackers and permissions in apps installed on your device.) https://f-droid.org/packages/org.eu.exodus_privacy.exodusprivacy/

  • wildcardology@lemmy.world
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    I’ve seen this kind of post about boost several times now. It’s just sad that people are just maliciously uninformed. It made me want to support the dev even more. Paying for the ad free version now.

  • HatchetHaro@pawb.social
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    i mean, it’s just ads. you’re blowing this way out of proportion just because of some unintrusive ads.

    devs gotta eat. if you prefer FOSS, that’s great! i love FOSS software too! but boost is like home to me, even with the ads.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    Or you can buy Boost and get rid of the ad/tracking.

    Boost is brilliant and other apps still have catching up to do but the competition is getting better and better.

      • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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        Will give it a shot, thanks! Though I’m very happy with boost currently - what does voyager do better?

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          Yes give it a try.

          I’m not saying that boost lacks anything. But it’s the feel that I get when using Voyager. I know it’s weird, but, it’s my enjoyment that made me switch.

  • Rogue@feddit.uk
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    This is a rather sensationalist headline.

    Every so often software developers need to eat food and live beneath shelter.

    The developer of Boost @[email protected] provides a free version that’s supported by ads, or you can purchase an ad free experience for a one time cost. That’s been a standard business since forever.

    There isn’t any grand conspiracy here.

    • Otter@lemmy.ca
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      Yup, the dev commented on this a while back here:

      https://lemmy.ca/post/6072534/3382664

      Dev here.

      The dialog and its content is not created by me, it is a standard solution from Google to comply with GDPR and other laws. More info here: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/10114014?hl=en

      The consent dialog is also required by Google AdMob to show ads, and it is shown when the ad network is initialized.

      When the app launches, first it checks for the remove ads purchase, and if it is not present, it will initialize the ads sdk. The ad network is not initialized if the remove ads purchase is detected.

      Boost for Reddit was using the very same ad networks and consent dialog.

      (In fact they’ve commented on this a few times)

      I personally liked Boost, and paid for the ad free version to support the development. For what it’s worth, I’ve also donated to / bought a few others for similar reasons, and I keep a few Lemmy apps installed so I can test things out on the admin side.

      Without recommending any particular app, I’d recommend this site, which lets you compare and filter by the factors that are important to you: https://lemmyapps.com/

      If you want a guide for new users, we have one here (tldr it links to the site above): https://fedecan.ca/en/guide/lemmy/for-users/mobile-apps

    • pmk@lemmy.sdf.org
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      As long as there is transparency, users can choose. Personally, I would rather not use a service at all than have ads or tracking.

    • Machinist@lemmy.world
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      Developer’s needs are pretty simple, however. Keep clean straw for bedding, fresh coffee, and unimpeded access to an Ethernet jack. Your developer can have gummy worms or beer in small quantities, as a treat. Of course, the bulk of their diet should be ramen/developer chow. A simple correction, such as deleting system32 or not properly shutting down Linux, is usually all that is needed. They’ll provide you with years of faithful service.

      Adopt a developer today!

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      As someone who uses this daily, I had no idea there were ads… So I’m being tracked without knowing it. I’m… Not into this.

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        That’s literally not the case. If you’ve purchased the app the ad logic isn’t loaded, your porn habits aren’t being tracked.

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          I didn’t pay for the no ad addition. I just have never seen one. I am likely being tracked, though.

          Next time, don’t assume. Adguard dns may be blocking it. That makes this situation a problem.

    • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
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      I agree with you however I think we can built a better internet and the fediverse is in my opinion part of it. However I understand that it’s hard to live on providing a free service, hoping for users to make donations to cover your spends and making a fair revenue is dellusional. I don’t have the magic recipe for making great revenue from a free apps without sacrificing users digital integrity. However I think it’s fair for Lemmy users to know that some clients could behave like proprietary closed and centralized plateforms such as X and Reddit.

      The author should have noted that users could pay a fee to disable ads and analytics because you can. He certainly didn’t knew this and that’s making it unfair.

      Honestly I don’t like extended analytics such as this and that’s one of the reasons I’m not using Boost. I rather send some sats (bitcoin) to free and open source projects I rely on. Not everybody is like that and I can imagine that many projects I’ve financially contribute to aren’t sustainable businesses, I wish there was another way than enabling global surveillance for people that couldn’t afford paying. Privacy shouldn’t be a privilege yet it is.

      TLDR ; Yes it’s standard business but Lemmy users and devs making great free product deserve better !

  • ProxyZeus@lemmy.world
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    As the other comments are saying, this is made very clear when you launch the app for the first time that it is ad supported, and you can donate a small amount to get all tracking and ads removed.

    Love the app and I want the dev to continue development so I paid for the ad free. Devs are people and need money to live too, you know this post was just sensationalized for your own clicks.

    • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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      Lemmings have a huge obsession with shit being both free and adfree, youtube is the most baffling one, they refuse to pay for it, then bitch about the ads, it seems they are entitled to having VoD delivered to them anytime anywhere in the world got completely free.

      • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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        YouTube is a little bit different, imo. Ads essentially carpet-bomb you on YouTube, and the money isn’t going to the people who actually create the content. If there were a reasonable number of ads, and they paid creators more, I wouldn’t have nearly as much of a problem with it as I do.

          • ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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            Did you miss the part where I said “reasonable” and “more”? I did not say that there should be no ads or that they should pay creators everything.

            YouTube makes more than $350b annually, and the most liberal operating cost estimate I’ve seen (they don’t release numbers) has put their hosting and distribution costs at about $25b. They pay out $9b annually to creators. They have 122k employees making an average of $117k annually, so that’s another $13b in employee salaries (which is always the biggest cost any company shoulders). To be extremely generous, let’s assume they also spend another $40b for all the other stuff they do as a business (office space, gold for play button plaques, pizza parties for their employees, legal, etc)–to be clear, that’s more than Netflix made in total last year, so while it might be ridiculously high, it’s not ridiculously low.

            That adds up to $87b in operating costs annually. To be even more unreasonably liberal here, let’s double that. $174b in operating costs on $350b revenue would be less than half of the total, leaving them them with a whopping $176,000,000,000 in profits annually.

            Only about $40b of that is ads; everything else is from subscriptions, deals, etc. And, as noted before, they pay creators about $9b annually. So if they cut ads in half, and doubled their creator payout, they would reduce their total profits to $147b. If they totally eliminated ads altogether and quadrupled their creator payout, they’d still be making more than $107 billion dollars per year above operating expenses.

            They can afford to ease up on the gas a little bit.

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        Youtube shouldn’t be baffling to you if you pay attention. Youtube still hoards tons of data and tracking on top of its ads. And paying doesn’t stop that. Also, they removed the option to pay to remove ads but skip all the other stuff. They removed that option right at the same time they started their war against ad blockers. Combine those points with the typical enshittification and we wind up with a service that doesn’t deserve your pity.

      • foenix@lemm.ee
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        Counterpoint I think there’s a lot of lemmings who put a lot of money into hosting the very server you just posted this comment on.

      • samc@feddit.uk
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        For me at least, my objection with YouTube is that Google takes a cut. I’d much rather contribute an equivalent amount to some creators via patreon and adblock the site.

        Also I’m not saying the host doesn’t deserve a cut, I just think that corporations like Google are a general pest that should be eradicated

        • Tja@programming.dev
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          Do have any idea how difficult it is to host a video platform? The cut they take is absolutely fair.

          Anyone with a cell phone can be a youtuber.

          I have close to 20 years of experience in IT and I would need to spend many days to set up an alternative for myself (forget about other people) even using software already made, and it would still cost a ridiculous amount of (partially upfront) money.

          • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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            My issue with that is, g didn’t have to buy yt. They chose to. They fucked it. They knew going in that yt was a money pit. They understood everything, and they still did it. The users expected a decent, not ad-riddled experience, with no paywalled features, as yt was 20 years ago. For me, when g cried ‘it’s so hard, it costs so much money’ I pulled out my tiny violin as they assfucked their users, when they realized it hurts to hemorrhage money.

            That’s what you signed up for, g. You saw a lemon on the dealership lot, stated ‘I can fix that’, and then when you realized you can’t, you expect everyone else to chip in for the repair bills - by money, personal data, or both. Nah fam, that’s not how we do things round here.

            • Tja@programming.dev
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              They knew what it costs, it was their plan all along as with every major service.

              • get a bunch of money (either from other products or VC)
              • offer a free or ridiculously cheap service to attract users, losing money in the process
              • explosion in the number of users
              • establish yourself as the standard
              • stop losing money by rising prices or implementing ads
              • users put Pikachu face, they thought the free service would magically run forever

              If Google hadn’t bought it, YouTube would implement ads on their own, it was just not sustainable. Google had deeper pockets, could run it losing money for longer, get an even bigger share of the market and now they are cashing in, billions per quarter.

              And i am one of the people paying for it, because it is a good product. Attracts good creators by paying them better than other platforms and works well everyday, on every device.

                • Tja@programming.dev
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                  I don’t know that much about marketing but I thought a loss leader was a specific product that attracts to the store in hopes to make a profit with other products. Put onions so cheap that people will come in and also buy potatoes and butter, and you make your profit on those.

      • Leraje@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        Lemmings have a huge obsession with shit being both free and adfree

        Not sure thats very accurate. There’s a healthy percentage who donate to instances and developers, because on open source platforms/services/software you don’t have just trust no ones selling your data for their profit and its good to support that.

        If Google open sourced their clients, got rid of adverts and all tracking and stopped selling or giving away user data but charged a reasonable fee I’d happily use YouTube.

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          I am clearly talking about people who continue to use youtube and want to use youtube but also adfree and for free, if you stopped using YouTube all my respect for you for actually standing up for what you believe in.

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        Definitely a dissenting view but one I can’t help but agree with. Same applies to piracy for me. You don’t want to give Disney money? Fair enough. Very reasonable. You still “need” to watch The Mandalorian? Okay…

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          I don’t think that’s how most pirates, myself included, see it. It’s not about “needing” to see the mandalorian, it’s simply about wanting to see it, but if the only way to see it “legally” is to make a monthly subscription for a service that offers me no other value, offered by a company I don’t want to support, I’m not doing that. And the thing is that it doesn’t have to be this way - I happily paid for Netflix for years, before content started being fragmented. As a wise man once put it, piracy is a service problem, not a price problem.

          Same with Youtube - it’s not the ads, it’s the endless amount, the annoying implementations, and non-creator-friendly practices. They’re not doing ads in order to keep the servers running - they simply need to find new ways to squeeze every cent of profit quarter after quarter, and I’m not playing that game.

          This only applies to big corps though - if you pirate indie content and don’t even make a donation to the artist, you’re an ass.

          • jpeps@lemmy.world
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            I really appreciate you responding to me in good faith, thanks. I know it’s a fine line, but generally for me not liking the terms of the agreement isn’t enough for me to force my own terms. That said, the one time I’ve pirated something in the last few years was when Prime removed a show from the platform when I had 1.5 episodes of 5 seasons left to go. The idea of paying an extra 10 quid to watch maybe 1% of an otherwise ‘free’ show pissed me off haha.

            So I’m not following my philosophy perfectly either. If it came to something like wanting to watch The Mandalorian from scratch though, I would wait and buy the DVD/BluRay.

        • kameecoding@lemmy.world
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          I disagree with that, Piracy doesn’t cost anyone anything, it’s people using their own internet connection and hardware to share the data, I also paid way more for my Plex setup than what it would cost to pay for streaming services.

          I have everything in one place, conveniently, that’s the big difference, that’s why I am willing to pay more for my own setup.

          I used to pay for netflix too, but then everyone started doing their own streaming service and now you need to have like 5-6 and then every country has something different on it, it’s a mess.

          Not to mention they did shit like removed a Community episode because I guess that fixed racism?

          another thing is that Scrubs is one of my favorite shows, but because licensing deals expired they changed the soundtrack and the original soundtrack was a huge part of that show, so to see it in it’s original version, you have to pirate it.

      • count_duckula@discuss.tchncs.de
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        I’d pay for Youtube if Google would guarantee to not track me. I donate to open source projects that I use, rotating every month whom I choose to donate to. I even donated to Manjaro recently even though I don’t use it any more, but it was something I had used in the past and I was poor and couldn’t donate them then. But I refuse to feel any guilt for watching Youtube for free.

    • krimson@lemmy.world
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      I reported this post because it hurts the dev for no reason. Hope it gets removed but the damage is already done. People are stupid.

        • douglasg14b@lemmy.world
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          Your getting downvoted for an accurate statement.

          This really is just redditv2. Discussion to the sidelines over vibes and feels.

        • deltapi@lemmy.world
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          It’s being presented in such a way that makes it look like malicious/nefarious tracking is in place, when in reality it has to do with ad analytics.

          • ysjet@lemmy.world
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            It’s 2025, ad analytics ARE for malicious/nefarious purposes. Who do you think they’re selling them to, Mr. Rogers?

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              And if you want them gone, you can pay for the app. It’s not like you’re stuck with them. Boost 'thank you' screen

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      Ya… I just bought the app. It was like 6 bucks? Totally worth it since I use it all the time and I want to support the dev.

    • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
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      Try the Photon WebApp client, there is public instances but you can self-host yours ! Still early but enjoying it so far !

  • 4shtonButcher@discuss.tchncs.de
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    I remembered Boost from the good old days a while back and am using it alongside voyager. It’s not as great as I remembered, so I’ll probably stick with Voyager. My home network keeps me safe of ads though 😉

    • _spiffy@lemmy.ca
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      I tried and disliked both of those. They worked fine they just felt bad. Bad to digging around for clients.

  • M137@lemmy.world
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    OP, you suck. This has been (falsely) reported before, and every time it gets shut down as fear-mongering. I really doubt you learned of this, did any kind of source checking or just looked it up without seeing the MANY disproving replies that are always there.

    I’ve seen this enough times, this exact post, to where I’m certain it’s consciously done false sensationalist crap. There are several other posts like this about other apps and services that get posted every couple of weeks/months and just like here they always get told off for their idiocy. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a group or person doing much of it, it’s the exact same every time.

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    Yeah there is a dialogue on first launch telling you it’s ad supported software and that you can pay a small fee to remove all ads. Your post here is old news about an old strategy and throughout the comments here you claim it’s secretive which is false.

    It’s a charitable reading to say you’re uninformed. I would lean more toward you wanting people to be misinformed about Boost, because as others point out, its ad support is called out in multiple ways before you use it, but you don’t care. Instead, you choose to call this completely common and standard way of supporting an app “predatory” and “secret”, neither of which near truth. Op, is your account the alt of the Sync dev or something?

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      Op, is your account the alt of the Sync dev or something?

      I wish that was the case. @[email protected] - the Sync dev - has been MIA for over half a year now. Which sucks, because Sync currently has a breaking bug causing it to not show posts as read, making it mostly unusable. I had to cancel my subscription for it that I was happily paying for before to support his work.

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          It was pretty common for him to disappear for a while and then pop up with a whole bunch of new features. I didn’t mind that before and gladly paid the $1.50/month subscription to support his work and make Lemmy more accessible. But yeah, can’t justify it now that the app shows all links as unread.

      • CrayonRosary@lemmy.world
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        You were happily paying it before then? He’s done this so many times. I gave up about a year ago when he made markdown work in titles, which no one asked for, and then disappeared again. Everyone who started a title with a hashtag had a giant freaking font for a heading. And spoiler markdown had never worked right. It always used the reddit style. It would even change proper Lemmy spoiler tags into reddit ones when you editted your comment.

        I took the time to try out every other app at the time and settled on Thunder. It’s just as good, it’s in active development, and it’s free and open source, so it can never be abandoned like Sync is. Anyone can fork it if they had to, and keep it going.

        It pisses me off so much that Lawson had the audacity to charge $20 for a broken port of Sync for Reddit and then disappear with severe open bugs for months at a time. I wish I could get my money back.

        • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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          I downloaded Sync the first day he released it. It had a few bugs, but he was very active at the time and seemed to clean them up quickly. I made a post in his community about a problem with comment sorting and he resolved it the very next day!

          So yeah, I glady paid for what I thought was a pretty good app (still is without the unread issue). Since then I’ve gone back to Voyager, which is ok but still has some quirks that make me miss Sync. Might give Thunder a shot.

        • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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          It happens when your home instance upgrades to a newer version of Lemmy that changed how one of the variables worked to track read posts. I’m guessing lemme.ee hasn’t upgraded yet? Sh.itjust.works upgraded something like 6 months ago and it’s been unusable ever since. I suppose I could make an account on another instance, but that’s a pain.

  • A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world
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    Or just use a browser, ffs.

    everything doesnt need to be an app.

    especially when its nothing but a goddamn webbrowser, wrapped in an app, with less protection.

    • puppinstuff@lemmy.ca
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      Why use a browser?

      Just learn how to parse raw HTTP responses. That’s all a browser does, with less protection.

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        Nope, you can’t actually do that anymore since there’s SSL in the way. I tried anyway, though, just for giggles:

        drath@machine:~$ telnet lemm.ee 80
        Trying 2606:4700:20::681a:5f3...
        Connected to lemm.ee.
        Escape character is '^]'.
        GET /
        <html>
        <head><title>400 Bad Request</title></head>
        <body>
        <center><h1>400 Bad Request</h1></center>
        <hr><center>cloudflare</center>
        </body>
        </html>
        Connection closed by foreign host.
        

        Of course I can curl and wget, but that feels against the spirit of hardcore reading the raw data.

    • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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      They’re not just browsers, they’re accessing the posts via an API and presenting it in a bespoke manner with purpose-built controls.

      That’s good because it’s faster and lower-data than a webpage, and it’s easier and faster to use on mobile.

      Not every app is just a web browser, that’s a particular kind of lazy app created by the app hype bubble like 20 years ago.

      • TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works
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        I really don’t know anything about the technicalities of apps, but you should try http://phtn.app/ on mobile, it’s UI is pretty good.
        That being said if there was an app for it I would totally prefer that over a webpage in my browser

        • Excrubulent@slrpnk.net
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          That’s very laggy for me, whereas my lemmy app, voyager, is extremely smooth.

          It’s building a general purpose UI as a webpage which then has to be interpreted via your browser which then serves the UI up to you. Because this browser has to handle literally whatever is being thrown at it at all times, there is a lot of overhead and extra processes running to make it work correctly.

          All of the graphics are equivalent, every line between every element, every button, every image is represented in the same data that the text is, so the phone is interpreting and rendering many times more stuff.

          In contrast, a native app takes the bare text & media data and renders it in native controls, so the phone is able take a tiny amount of data and fit it into a template that renders natively on the phone. It’s doing orders of magnitude less work.

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          I use it on desktop, despite some bugs from time to time I really enjoy the experience and slick design ! It’s still in early alpha so honestly I am impressed !

    • Rogue@feddit.uk
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      4 days ago

      You’re being downvoted for providing true information that disputes sensationalism. This place is truly fucking weird

      • CaptainBasculin@lemmy.bascul.in
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        4 days ago

        I get that lemmy userbase in general dislikes ads, i dislike ads too but not every dev can go without it on their projects. There has to be some income from somewhere after all.

        • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
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          4 days ago

          You can serve ads to your users without being Big Brother and selling users data to data brokers… Unfortunately it doesn’t seems to generate enough revenue anymore :'(

          • kat@orbi.camp
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            4 days ago

            Goes to show that the first people to vote on stuff don’t represent the community as a whole

            • stebo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              4 days ago

              it probably only changed because Rogue made that comment

              just like on Reddit, there’s a lot of sheeple here that downvote a comment just because it’s already being downvoted

    • orize@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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      4 days ago

      As a free alternative, it is unfortunately cluttered with ads and tracking features.

      Moreover, it employs a predatory strategy by removing these inconveniences only if users opt to pay, despite the existence of equally effective free alternatives.

      This approach can confuse (especially new) users, potentially leading them to choose a less favorable option due to lack of awareness.

      • Acamon@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        For sure, it’s worth letting people know if they aren’t aware. It’s been a while since I installed boost, but I remember there being very clear messages about the ads and tracking, explaining it was to compensate the developer for the time he spent converting the reddit client to lemmy, and with the option of a one time fee to completely avoid trackers and ads.

        While I love it when things are truly FOSS, I understand that I pay my barber and my plumber for their time, and I don’t have a problem paying a one-off fee to buy software I want. What is exploitative are many subscription models, and all software that takes your money AND still monetises you (looking at you microsoft).

        It’s good to make people aware of genuinely free alternatives. But I used jerboa, voyager and a few other lemmy clients and I’m much happier with Boost and it was worth every cent.

        • orize@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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          4 days ago

          As long as you are in the know and knowingly know what you are paying for it’s all good.

          I personally wouldn’t because supporting them (by using or paying) will bump them up on App-store popularity lists when you search for “Lemmy” and that would only keep misleading more unaware people.

          • Acamon@lemmy.world
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            4 days ago

            You’re completely free to support the apps and developers you prefer, but I don’t think I understand what you mean by “keep misleading more unaware people”? The play store listing for Boost for Lemmy says “Contains ads.” and “In-app purchases” in multiple places (for one, it’s the the third line after the name and developer). Its really not misleading anyone. Do you have examples of Boost or the developer claiming it is ad free or FOSS? Or do you mean something else?

            I don’t approve of predatory practices, so if you can provide any evidence I would be keen to change my 5 star review and stop using the app.

      • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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        4 days ago

        It’s pretty obvious, nothing is secret here. This strategy has been 1000% standard for like 20 years now.

      • lazynooblet@lazysoci.al
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        4 days ago

        “predatory”. You are really stretching it. A full screen message is displayed on first launch explaining the options.

      • Carighan Maconar@lemmy.world
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        I mean if a free software that is funded via ads using tracking for their ads (a required for ad networks after all) is “confusing” to users, I honestly don’t know what to say. 🤷

        Also what would be that less favorable option? Paying a dev? What a horrible fate indeed. 😅

      • Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee
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        4 days ago

        Lol, it’s not like they have a monopoly (a big base sure).

        What they do is transparent, they let you know upfront, and the price for the app it low.

        I’m not saying I like that model, so I don’t use Boost, but this is far from megacorp strategy.

        I don’t like them because of the (ad) monetisation with the big corpos, but that’s just me going ‘eww’, not me looking at Boost holding a gun to users saying this is the only way to interact with Lemmy.

        (I go much more ‘ewwwww’ when I have to install an apk from Google store, via eg Aurora Store)

        Also long live the (un??)dead Eternity, rofl.

        Also, always use open sauce repos.

    • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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      You’re not wrong but… gestures broadly at the other available apps that don’t do stuff like this

      It would also take some huge scandal before voyager ceases to be the absolute king of lemmy apps.

      Performance alone i have yet to see anything get close.

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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      And, importantly, If your account is paid it never even loads the libraries or initializes the ad systems so there is zero data going to these trackers.

      I don’t use this app (I use Eternity), but there’s nothing shady going on here. Developing an app isn’t free and it isn’t unfair for the developer to want to earn a living.

    • Neofox@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      How do you know if you paid for the app? Can’t find that section in my profile and I don’t remember if I did.

  • ToiletFlushShowerScream@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    An up front paid app for devs trying to make money off of the lemmyverse? Sure, okay. A free version by devs trying to make the world a better place? You’re a literal hero. Devs doing shady tracking like this? Never ever.