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/
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.
Why use a browser?
Just learn how to parse raw HTTP responses. That’s all a browser does, with less protection.
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.
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.
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 browserI 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 !
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.
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
Nooo, I hate useless margins (especially on the narrow side of the screen)! :D
Nice example! 😜
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.
They gonna know all the weird porn I look at on here. Hope advertisers need that info
This is definitely not a healthy dismissal of privacy violating behavior.
Especially in this day and age where it’s being increasingly weaponized.
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. @ljdawson@lemmy.world - 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.
It does? I’ve never had this issue on Sync.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!thunder_app@lemmy.world is great.
ok. I don’t mind. this does not bother me at all.
I use Sync. Does it track my data too?
I’m not familiar with this interface, but it looks to me like it is saying Google was doing the tracking. Could this be tracking attempts made from a web view opened while using Sync, and not the actual Sync app itself? I want so badly to believe they are more privacy conscious than that. Love the app, been using it since it first came out for Reddit. Solo dev IIRC.
I am not either lol, and the web browser tracking you suggest is a decent possibility.
Judging by the fact that the dev hasn’t bothered to do anything with it in months, I doubt that it matters.
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.
Would like to throw thunder_app@lemmy.world in the ring as an alternative
ive been on Voyager and i like it very much. is there a known better option, or my first choice was a solid? thanks
I always come back to voyager
It’s a solid option, here is a list of great fediverse clients I made on AlternativeTo if you want to discover other great options.
Thank you! Saved and noticed you mention Openvibe on the list. It’s a real great app. Some of the others I’m gonna give a try
I personnaly don’t use OpenVibe as I tend to avoid proprietary software on personnal device but I like the idea of having multiple protocoles or services in one feed.
I think nostr has some amazing feature and it’s something really interesting to see evolving but the fediverse has a much bigger and diverse user-base which is important to me. Ditto is making the two bridgeable so I think it’s a bright future for distributed social networks (not social media :D)
No, Voyager is a very solid choice, and def the best option available ATM
is there any way to get display names/pfps/etc on Voyager? I keep trying to switch away to an app that has those features but something about Voyagers simplicity just keeps me hooked.
no, because the dev thinks display names are actively harmful and should be removed from lemmy. they support replacing display names with flairs like reddit. I think their post is thoughtful, but I don’t agree that display names are all that malicious.
YSK that, in general, you should only 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.
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AntennaPod is like 10x better than pocketcasts. Anytime someone asks for a podcast app, Foss or not, Antennapod is the first one brought up.
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.
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.
If the devs say it up front then how does reporting it hurt them? It’s just accurate.
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.
It’s 2025, ad analytics ARE for malicious/nefarious purposes. Who do you think they’re selling them to, Mr. Rogers?
And if you want them gone, you can pay for the app. It’s not like you’re stuck with them.
Don’t abuse the report system.
Your getting downvoted for an accurate statement.
This really is just redditv2. Discussion to the sidelines over vibes and feels.
Same deal with sync.
Minus the “small amount” part.
Is it significantly bigger? I don’t remember.
The sync dev made the same app that he did for the… other site, and built up loyalty from that. I switched to it as soon as I could get my hands on it and make sure it still worked the same.
People already liked it because they already knew it. Don’t remember now what the paid version cost, but I imagine he gets a lot of loyalty from before.
I’ve only tried one other app for Lemmy though, so I can’t say much about how it compares to others.
It’s $20
Ho leeeeee
I didn’t think it was that high, even for both versions (reddit and Lemmy) combined.
Either way I’m not too upset.
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.
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.
Well yes, I’m just gonna watch Youtube videos ad free, how did you know
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.
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.
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.
Not sure what that has to do with my point, but okay
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
So, stop using their service? That’s the best way to eradicate google
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.
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.
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.
It’s called a loss leader, FYI.
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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.
Do you think all those bytes of video data are free to host and get to you?
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.
Aside from what everyone else has said regarding the ads: Boost is an amazing app and I don’t browse Lemmy without it!
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Boost is the best!
Launch the Rocket! 🚀
