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/
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.
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
As long as there is transparency, users can choose. Personally, I would rather not use a service at all than have ads or tracking.
It is an excellent app, I just paid for the version without ads, that’s all you have to do.
Exactly, we both get what we want, everyone is happy. I’m just saying that it’s important for both of us to have the relevant information so we can make our choices. Which this app provides. So that’s good.
then don’t use it
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!
What if we want red bull instead of alcohol?
Red bull, in moderation, is acceptable. In fact, when you expect exceptional effort from your developer, such as ‘crunch time’, Red Bull supplementation is encouraged.
A productive developer is a happy developer!
I prefer to feed developers “flat food.” Just slide it under the door!
I paid for the product, I encourage and support products i like instead of seeing ads, whenever i can.
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 !
Just bought the ad-free version. It’s easy to forget developers need to eat too
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?
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 hamis work.
wow… subscription and also MIA that long!
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.
Yeah, I remember seeing complaints about that from time to time. Sounds like it’s gotten worse.
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.
Same! Boost is awesome and it was a no brainer paying for the ad removal
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.
Same deal with sync.
YSK also that the paid version does not have ads or trackers
What a cool service, thanks for sharing. You can also check the Exodus database via web if you can’t or don’t want to install the native Android app.
That’s great info! Thanks for replying
It’s also built into the Aurora Store (frontend for Google Play Store)
You can do a one time purchase to remove the ads and tracking you know, monetising an app without ads is hard.
You’re being downvoted for providing true information that disputes sensationalism. This place is truly fucking weird
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.
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 :'(
Lol, dude got aa much upvotes as u
When I posted that the comment I was replying to was sitting at
-13
Do you get a tracker-free software version, or just an ad-free experience?
The Dev confirmed that the trackers which are part of the ads plugin are not loaded when purchasing the app.
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.
Ceases*
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.
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.
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.
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.
It’s pretty obvious, nothing is secret here. This strategy has been 1000% standard for like 20 years now.
“predatory”. You are really stretching it. A full screen message is displayed on first launch explaining the options.
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. 😅
Good work bringing this to the attention of others.
I agree that Jerboa is good. If anyone wants another option, then Connect For Lemmy is clean, simple, and updated frequently. I’m nothing to do with Connect, just someone that has tried loads of Lemmy apps on Android, and has settled on Connect.
Isn’t it possible to provide an ad supported version without tracking?
Ads generally come with tracking, since the advertiser wants to know their ad was seen / effective. Some ad systems might be better than others, but I don’t have experience there
I know Mozilla is working on ‘Privacy respecting ads’, which was also controversial: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2024/article/a-privacy-first-solution-that-meets-advertisers-needs/
How would that work? You want the Boost dev to create their own “ethical ads” network?
Yeah someone would need to create an ad network according to what Mozilla is envisioning, then Boost would have to utilize that and add support for it. There’s an extra step involved. 😅
Well – two extra steps. The first one is huge, which is to create an ad network devoid of the tracking that companies salivate for, then there is Boost adopting it. The latter seems highly likely and a small change. The former is huge and feels unlikely in today’s world.
Sync is also pretty good
There is a reason so many Lemmy apps are abandoned, they were free and free of advertising. Devs need to eat. I prefer the paid app model to support the devs as opposed to ads. The dev of boost has always been open about how ads work.
YSK that, in general, you should only ever use Android apps from F-Droid unless you’ve got a very good justification for doing otherwise. That’s especially true for generic/basic utility apps like calculators, calendars, and file managers, classic games like solitaire or tetris, and Lemmy clients.
This is completely natural common sense for you and me, but to other people its alien to live with the “guilty until proven innocent” mindset that needs to be applied to software.
Weird question maybe but are any of the podcast apps as feature rich and pocketcasts? I really like the trim silence function.
Raccoon is also a great alternative for trackerless Lemmy browsing, I personally prefer it over Jerboa and Voyager.
I guess I’m just legitimately confused about how to feel about it all. Lemmy is free, signing up on an instance is free, people are posting/creating content for free, moderators are taking care of the space for free. No one’s locking in to get “fed” through the entire chain. The arguments about abandoned apps doesn’t really compute since plenty paid and advertising friendly apps go under/stop developing further as well (and the entire Lemmy eco-system is free so silly points of “capitalism better”). There’s also the crux of “Apps just replace a webpage”, they’re really not reinventing the wheel here.
But, if people prefer paid apps, if the developers want to construct the apps in that manner, have at it. I do think spreading awareness of what apps are out there is important, and how they operate (this is YSK after all). I also wouldn’t spend time in my day coming into defend organizations that want to monetize on open source community projects either.
I guess I’m just legitimately confused about how to feel about it all.
The freedom of Lemmy and the fediverse let’s people choose how to interact with it.
If a user is looking for a free to use , open source, ad-free experience then that’s their choice.
If others are happy to pay for an app because they prefer the experience that app provides them they can choose to do so.
I also wouldn’t spend time in my day coming into defend organizations that want to monetize on open source community projects either.
OP read that Boost may contain code used for tracking, then started spewing some conspiracy that “Boost is tracking your data for profiling and more!” without any proof or any actual research.
This isn’t a case of defending some giant corporation, it’s just stopping tedious drama before it spreads.
If you check OPs profile they’ve been spreading this for over a week. When I first saw this thread the masses were heavily upvoting the conspiracy and downvoting anyone disagreeing.
Ooh, that app is fun! I also recommend Eternity for a Lemmy app (or just Fennec and ublock- not that my lemmy instance has anything to worry about)
I also love the difference in apps I got from the Play Store vs Neo store.
Also, ExpressVPN with 2 trackers? Shame. Mullvad wins again.
Voyager is pretty good but mr. Voyager developer, for the love of god, add some left-right margin! I don’t know why but this makes me irrationally angry to the point I simply can’t use Voyager
As long as it’s toggleable, cause I like the no margin
Excessive configuration can be a problem of its own (can lead to decision fatigue, for example). I think it’s okay for the Voyager dev not to try to please everybody all the time, and for people who really want margins to use a different app.
Nice example! 😜
I recommend Thunder. Always been slick and good.
I tried the others and stuck to it. But I think all the apps are great and it just comes down to personal preference on which someone likes to drive most.
I’ve not found a similar service to Exodus for iOS devices (yeah, I know, but that’s what I’ve got) but to the best of my knowledge Mlem is a pretty good alternative to Boost on apple devices, and the best user-experience I’ve so far found
Mlem is in my opinion the best open source Lemmy client for iOS. There is another amazing client named Arctic for Lemmy that has great UX but the app is proprietary. However it seems to be privacy respecting and nothing compared to Boost privacy nightmare on free tier.
