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Appreciation post for Liftoff not collecting user data or injecting ads. (lemm.ee)
submitted 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) by to c/liftoff@lemmy.world
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I was looking forward to trying Sync today now that it's live, but my enthusiasm was immediately dampened after seeing the "Data Safety" section on the Google Play store.

Liftoff has been great, and want to say thanks for making an awesome app. This will continue to be my daily driver.

Edit: for clarity, because the post got way bigger than I expected.

Sync looks like a fantastic app, and the dev/s should charge whatever they feel is fair for their efforts, even if that's through the usual ads + ad tracking.

My intent was just to post here in /c/Liftoff to thank the Liftoff devs for managing to somehow offer an awesome app without any of that.

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[–] 41 points 3 years ago (3 children)

I think OP doesn't mind paying for an app, it's the "collect data" that was his issue. If the free version collects data to send you ads, and there is an option to buy and remove the data collection and ads, then that's probably fine with most people.

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  • [–] 36 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    That's the way it is being reported. Buy to remove ads and the tracking goes away.

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  • [–] 46 points 3 years ago (5 children)

    Yeah, I've been really disappointed in Lemmy's response to sync. I thought this community was supposed to be technically minded but in every thread on Sync, the top comment is repeating disinformation about tracking and there's tons of people tearing down the developer.

    I get not wanting to use an App that has ads, but people are getting downright toxic over an App that no one is forcing them to use lol.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago*

    It's extremely ridiculous. I just subscribed to Sync Ultra for $17/year. I have other apps that I subscribe to for a similar annual rate. I don't mind paying to support a good app and its continued development. Pretty sure I can forego a few lattés a year and I'll be OK while the devs get to eat and keep doing what they do.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 years ago

    The fediverse has a very high percentage of users who are FOSS zealots. These people would rather drink rancid gnu piss from Richard Stallman's sweaty jock strap than deal with commercialized software. After you've been around them long enough (1996 in my case) you learn to tune them out.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 years ago (1 child)

    Where are the disinformation? Show me how I can have the ad-free version on my phone that doesn't have Play Services and I'll be very happy.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 years ago* (1 child)

    There are lots of comments and posts giving the false impression that Sync is tracking you outside of what is needed to support ads, including posts showing trackers from websites that are linked through lemmy and not part of sync at all (you would get those same trackers just browsing vanilla lemmy and clicking through a link)

    You can do your own tracker analysis on the App. When you pay to disable ads all tracking goes away, which lines up with the developers claims that he doesn't even load those libraries through the ad SDK when you aren't on the ad supported version.

    And yeah, this is distributed through the play store, if that's an issue for you, you don't need to download it, but like... that's not the misinformation I'm talking about.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 years ago

    There are lots of comments and posts giving the false impression that Sync is tracking you outside of what is needed to support ads

    Never noticed that, I think that the tracking because of ads is what people dislike.

    When you pay to disable ads all tracking goes away

    I'd actually love to! While I like open source more, I'm not opposed to the occasional non-open-source app if it's good and not shady. But I'd have to have Play Services on my phone, which I don't. I used to use Sync Pro back in the Reddit days but then I switched to a different OS to have more privacy and I had to change to Relay Pro because Sync Pro doesn't work without Play Services.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago*

    Another thing to consider is that in the past apps could be sold separately with an ad version and an ad free version. So people could flat out avoid having an app that had any ad elements.

    So there now only being an ad version, and then the initial first impression people saw was a subscription model to remove ads rubbed people the wrong way.

    Either way, people can use the app or not, but it's been odd how some people have been so emotional over people choosing to not use Sync. Like one of the top comments in this thread is just someone insulting foss and people not paying for Sync.

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