What constitutes Usage Data. Is it sharing the posts I view, communities I subscribe to etc?
Does paying for a premium version stop this data being collected?
From DuckDuckGo:
For what it’s worth, I subscribed to Ultra about an hour ago and DDG hasn’t picked up any additional tracking attempts since then. I think it may be limited entirely to Google’s ad service for the free, ad-supported tier and maybe crash diagnostics that the app gives you the option of enabling or disabling.
I think that the lack of further attempts backs up what lj shared a bit ago in the Discord. That’s still a hell of a lot of tracking for folks who can’t or don’t want to pay, though.
Can someone explain what this means. The ads/tracking is not activated in Sync for Lemmy? If so, why have it in the code.
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I would really love to know what ads are targeting low battery levels. Chargers and battery packs obviously. But I wonder what else being at 5% tells you about a person 😅
Could be device fingerprinting
Behavioral data at least. When and how person charges phone, how much they use phone and what times.
Btw, what duckduckgo app is this? Not their browser?
Wtf
Doesn’t this ad/subscription model, go against the grain a bit? With Lemmy & the fediverse in general, being an opensource environment, which has no ads, & funded by donations, rather than a subscription model…
No, it doesn’t. Unlike Reddit, Twitter, or Threads, Lemmy offers a variety of apps. There are so many that there is something for everyone. Even a “professional” app that finances itself with advertising or a subscription is allowed. The special thing about Lemmy is the freedom of choice.
Funding your project with donations is just not a realistic long-term goal. This is why so many instances fold up shop in just a couple of weeks as their servers are overloaded and no one donates money to keep it up.
Capitalism is a problem but it doesn’t mean everything has to be socialism. There can be an in-between.
Capitalism is a problem but it doesn’t mean everything has to be socialism. There can be an in-between.
It’s not even that to be honest. Socialism is characterized by worker ownership and operation of companies primarily. LJ is a sole proprietor exploiting nobody, not earning a wage via labor and not having to work because he under pays others to work for him. He’s just a worker like the rest of us.
I definitely agree that donations is not a viable long term path. Maybe in a different economic model. People need to be realistic. The general arguments they are making against Sync in favor of FOSS apps can also be made against them using FOSS apps by the FLOSS folks. People should pay if they can. And use a free third party app if they can’t, or don’t like how sync works.
I really don’t get the hate people are putting out there over this. This is why third party apps build strong ecosystems. You can find what you want.
You are mixing socialism and communism.
You’re right
Socialism doesn’t mean free.
I would one time pay for this, but a subscription feels meh.
There are plenty of apps for Lemmy, that aren’t supported by ads, nor should they be, given the whole ethos of the fediverse…
I really like Connect for Lemmy! And it’s Canadian!
Connect is really nice, as are Canadians👍🏼
The ethos of the fediverse (insofar as it’s completely free with no ads) won’t be sustainable at scale; income for continued development and support does need to be taken into account at some point, and that goes for servers, frontends, apps, etc. Funding from donations only gets you so far. We will have to talk about it some day.
However, it is entirely too soon for ads and subscriptions. This feels openly and brazenly like talking advantage of Sync overly enthusiastic fanclub and the Sync name recognition. Get in early with a big name and start making money before any other big name apps like Boost are released.
I feel like as long as your home instance can keep alive with donations then it will scale well. If your home instance starts needing a subscription or shows ads you could always migrate elsewhere. (But that’s a pain I have already done that)
There is now a one time payment of $20 usd ($30 cad) to remove ads, an ongoing $20 cad a year subscription for ad free + additional services, or a one time, $99 usd payment for lifetime access to ad free + pro services.
So a nice selection!
I don’t have an issue with a reasonable subscription, but hard pass on trackers, especially when you’re paying.
Not defending tracking or anything, but you do not get trackers if you pay. This tracker is just for ads, which you don’t get if you pay.
The issue for me is having the code. If I pay, I want an app without the ads/trackers code.
My go-to analogy is Usenet. Back when usenet basically was the internet for a lot of people, you’d have access to a usenet server through your school, isp, or with a separate subscription to a usenet provider. Usenet itself was free and there were open source implementations of the client and server side components. There were also commercial implementations. The important thing was that net news ran on an open protocol that no company owned. Companies and individuals were free to do what they wanted.
I would not hesitate to buy a client that achieved the functionality of Apollo, or even Alien Blue. I didn’t really start using reddit until I had a good client, and I can see client-side issues being a hurdle to lemmy adoption. I’d prefer paying for a client over ad support. Still, the free and open source client community should be core going forward. I can even see the potential for a commercial server, once the community reaches critical mass in terms of content.
I’ve been involved with the foss community since my first linux install back in like 1994 or so. I remember when rms and esr were household names, so long as your household was a dorm room with cs majors. Like with linux (gnu/linux?) commercial and foss apps can co-exist, and like with linux there should remain a foss purist option in addition to the mixed mode option.
I don’t think the fediverse is facing a threat of commercial takeover - certainly not the lemmyverse. If anything, the threat is not onboarding enough people to be competitive with whatever reddit clone manages to launch in the next year or so, and which has the commercial backing to drive users to the service and have stable, scalable, and production quality code.
laughs in Voyager PWA
I hope there will be a pro version where you can pay to opt out of all ad and track nonsense.
LJ was very adamant about not collecting or keeping any user data under the reddit regime. I’m happy giving him the benefit of the doubt here.
The point is we don’t formally know.
The dev has stated that the tracking is disabled if ads are disabled, and other users have confirmed that via duckduckgo.
Hope this works but here’s what ddg is showing me was blocked. Only Google attempted to track and it was only once before I purchased ultra. Basically everything Google already knows about anyone using android.
TIL the DuckDuckGo app protection, thanks!
What’s that app you’re using to see that info?
It’s duckduckgo private browser. It does more than just browsing, there’s an app tracking protection feature.
Yea but does that prevent Google from getting that data via AdMob?
Removing ads via IAP or the Sync Ultra subscription eliminates that data sharing.
Per the dev, responding to my question in the discord server just now.
Why are the responses to all these questions happening in Discord rather than the official Sync Lemmy channel? 🤔
The Discord is just as official as this community?
Discord is a closed garden, it’s awful for things like this.
Because he’s busy? Not everyone is terminally online
There’s a discord?!
Blindly trusting someone are the people that usually fall for scams
“Benefit of the doubt” does not mean “blindly trust”…?
Listen you can do what you want if you feel your privacy is being violated, but this particular developer is not scamming anyone. He has an established history of not giving a fuck about your user data, which is backed up by other users verifying that the data tracking ends when ads are removed.
Lol Whatever floats your boat 🤷♂️
Lol mr computer science engineer
There’s nothing blind about it. I can see what trackers are being attempted on each app on my phone and sync stopped as soon as I purchased ultra.
So in other words, you’re making a blanket statement without any contextually relevant examples to support it. Almost like youre just fear mongering and don’t have an actual argument. Got it.
Usage data🗿
Since it’s admob my guess is it’s Google analytics. Which means everything you look at or touch, but it’s probably as much for the developer so they can see how users are reacting to the app layout and designs.
The developer should move to an open source platform for analytics if this bothers users.
GA can only collect what you specifically give it (clicks, touches, hovers…etc), so the developer should be able to be very specific here. Using GA by default only collects very basic impression info.
Use a duckduckgo tracker blocker. It’ll show you what trackers it has and what they typically collect.
This can be deceiving for link aggregator apps, because it’ll also pick up trackers that other sites are using, and not the app itself.
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Saving this for later to see if there’s a response.
Some quick search engine magic led me here: https://levelup.gitconnected.com/filling-out-the-app-privacy-section-in-app-store-connect-for-admob-users-bca0768ad86e
Same search engine magic should come up similar results for the Amazon usage data too
Hi All. I am next to illiterate in tracking /ads protection, so please advise: would Adguard disable all that mess? I was a paying user of Sync for Reddit, and will likely pay for this version as well if it is as polished, but i do have a nasty paranoia (or just a healthy desire to maintain my privacy, depending on one’s views) and am on a quest to disable as much of tracking as possible wherever I can .
I use adguard and everywhere that an ad was supposed to be it just said “sponsored content” lol. I paid for the ad free anyway because I like the dev and don’t mind supporting him
Hey, it isn’t paranoia if they really are out to get us, and we already know that they are.
I got to that exact screen and my excitement went from 100 to like 10. I’m back on Connect, didn’t even take Sync out for a spin.
They gonna take anything they can sell. Grow up.
I’m guessing the dev is cashing out and probably doesn’t expect Lemmy to last.
