I don’t understand the hate for charging for a product. I pay for a Mastodon client. If a Lemmy client that I really liked cost money and I felt the price was reasonable, I’d support that developer, too.
I would pay for a good native iOS App. Memmy is nice but apps using web frameworks always have more limitations than any native one.
Mlem is SwiftUI and FOSS! I know there are some issues with the current App Store build (weeps in janky scrolling) but we’ve got a major update hitting beta tomorrow and the App Store as soon as Apple will allow that’s going to fix it.
Looking forward to trying out the updated build!
WOW! i did try out mlem in its early days, but since i browse lemmy mainly on ipad, it wasn’t for me so i moved to memmy
Just checked back on it and now the iPad experience is miles better than memmy. Guess i’m coming back to mlem
Great work guys! Looking forward to tomorrow’s testflight
My only gripe that makes me stay with Mlem is lack of any method of saving/sharing just the photo of a post.
EDIT: I meant Mlem, not Memmy.
We’ve got that feature in testing right now, we’re hoping to have it out to the App Store in the next couple days!
Try Mlem, it’s native iOS. It’s a work in progress but the user experience is great and the beta and active development seem promising.
Try Avelon: https://testflight.apple.com/join/IzB0ZiBO
This and Mlem are my favorites.
A lot of Lemmy consists of FOSS enthusiasts, so something that’s paid and proprietary wouldn’t look as good in their eyes.
There’s also the fact that the free version of Sync uses (Google?) ad tracking to show you ads, so those people would also be upset.
Lemmy instances run on servers which are funded by donations. I don’t see how Sync (which is made by one developer) gets to be frowned upon because there’s a price for ad removal. All FOSS projects are somehow funded, usually by donations. Nothing runs for free.
If we get to use all the FOSS Lemmy apps is because someone put in the time and money to make it happen.
I would happily pay for any FOSS app that I use, even for higher price than proprietary ones. I personally would prefer to use a FOSS app, if the UX is somewhat on par with the proprietary ones.
That being said, no judgement to people who prefer proprietary app. We all have different priorities, hence have to make different tradeoffs.
Many of us happily pay add removal fees on apps, but few of us pay $20. It stands out as excessive, especially in a very competitive arena like Lemmy apps where lots of good options have emerged.
I agree. I paid for a better Apollo experience back in the day, and the developer well deserved it.
Nothing wrong at all with charging for the main version to support development as long as it’s not gouging. I don’t think this is gouging in the slightest.
I don’t think price gouging is even possible unless you control most or all of whatever resource. Sync is one of many apps to access Lemmy, and it isn’t forcing anyone to pay or even use it.
I agree. This situation is a bit different, but my point was the general idea of price gouging of a product.
Oh yeah? What Mastodon client? I’ve just been using the 1st party client and I feel like it’s pretty decent. Kinda curious how much better a client might be.
Woolly is my client of choice. I used Ivory, too, but I really took to Woolly.
Mammoth is a great free alternative but lacks some of the polish (and has a horrible app icon lol)
Thanks!
I still get put on blast on mastodon when I tell someone I use Ivory. Why the hell do they care?
I don’t understand the hate for charging for a product
I think the hate is mainly for the $100 lifetime payment. That’s a lot for some people.
$100 is lifetime Ultra, which is subscription otherwise. It’s $20 for lifetime removal of ads.
Yea I’m aware, I can read.
Your comment implied that folks need to pay $100 to use the app. Only $20 lets a user disable ads and any tracking associated. Otherwise if someone wants to try it or just doesn’t feel like paying they can use it for free with the potential to get a Google ad in their scroll.
No, my comment did not imply that.
To build on what other people are saying, the $100 also is supposed to cover the cost of running servers and networks that the app has to use for the more unique, advanced features. Those are all things that will cost the developer to keep up and running - it’s honestly nice that you even have the option to pay for lifetime since, once you’ve used the app for six years, the dev is going to start losing money off of your using the app.
Yep, before regionalizing prices Lj was charging about 450 bucks in local currency. Minimum wage is about 1200.
Many Americans (I’m one) cling to a variety of purity tests, and they struggle to grasp the bigger picture which could result in better outcomes for everyone.
Black or white. Win or lose. It’s a tiring cultural characteristic.
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It’s not the charge money part. It’s that it charges money and then still grabs and sells toms of your data. That’s something the Lemmy crowd is super opposed to even in free products, but a subscription to have your data sold when the service itself (Lemmy) is hosted on a donation basis and does not cost the devs a cent to use is too much.
Most of that opposition is directed at the Sync devs of course, not against some user who has made the decision that the proposal is good and decided to use Sync.
It literally doesn’t do that. If you pay for it, the ad code doesn’t even initialize, thus performing no tracking. And crash analytics are optional.
At least, if we trust Laurence. I wish it was open source so we could verify, but I choose to trust him.
Hey, you do you. I’m weirded out that the app makes you accept all that stuff and is only one commented line away from collecting your stuff. But I’m not here to lecture others. If you enjoy the app and think it’s money well spent, I wish that you get out of it what you hope for and that’s enough for me.
That’s a fair take, in my opinion.
That’s fair. Unfortunately Google doesn’t let you make multiple versions of the same app anymore, so he can’t make a second, paid version without that code. On the other hand, what’s the difference between a commented line and a missing line?
Oh no $20 to remove ads from an app that was made by one guy as his full time job. I’m proud to support anyone who works hard to make a more accessible, more enjoyable experience.
Oh no ads track you! My full time job is literally managing Google ads. We barely tracked you personally as it was. We could anonymously target generally the things you were interested in buying or what you’ve recently been looking at online.
And then Google crippled Google Analytics and it’s a shell of what it once was, and your data is even more anonymous!
If I work for a lawnmower company I couldn’t give a shit who you are or what you do online, all I care about is if you’re thinking about buying a lawnmower, so my client can show you what he’s got to offer. Then you can ignore the ads if you don’t like the product or its price point. That’s what Google does.
I’d rather that than be shown “Generic Chinese cashgrab mobile game ad that doesn’t actually reflect the gameplay” ads.
The guy worked hard to make possibly the best UI/UX on the platform. Either pay for his work or let him get the (barely any) money from showing ads to pay for his time. Either way, he worked for it.
Do you work full time for free too?
I don’t think most people worry about lawnmowing company. They worry about Google.
What google essentially sale is manipulation: they make money by changine your behavior, which is a extermely dangerous business in a democratic society. What makes it even more dangerous are
- It is a for-profit company, which means people with more money have more power to manipulate the general public
- It caters to U.S. government (since it is based in the U.S.), which is one of the most imperialistic governments today, with a terrible record of over-surveillance.
- Everything can be hacked, all the information that is stored will be leaked sooner or later. And these data can easily fall into the wrong hand; in fact, they tends to fall into the wrong hand.
That’s all perfectly sensible things to be concerned about. But given that we’re talking about an android app - if you’re eligible to use the app, Google almost certainly already has all your data anyways.
Yeah I’m sure there’s a tiny subsection of the people in these discussion who have custom ROMs flashed, but the vast majority are posting about Google tracking them on a google phone - or (even more annoyingly) posting about it from a phone that doesn’t even support the app, and so doesn’t remotely affect them
You raise a valid point, ~~but your original answer, to me, seems to normalize tracking to some extend: “since lawnmowing company dont care about your data, hence ads that tracks you is nit a big deal”, which is not the case. ~~
EDIT: I thought I was replying to someone else.
I think a better argument is that “since you are already on android, so google will have all your data anyway”.
That being said, one final bit of nits, even if you are on a google phone, google probably dont watch your every move. With every new place to interact with ads, there is more chance people will be tracked. Finally, I think the more one relying on google service the harder is to move them on a degoogled platform. So adding google ads to an app is definitely not harmless. But like you said, these probably dont matter to 95% of people.
You raise a valid point, but your original answer, to me, seems to normalize tracking to some extend: “since lawnmowing company dont care about your data, hence ads that tracks you is nit a big deal”, which is not the case.
I think you’re getting me mixed up with someone else - I’m just a rando who jumped in
I think a better argument is that “since you are already on android, so google will have all your data anyway”.
That was in fact exactly what i was arguing
google probably dont watch your every move
They do in fact watch your every move - Ok i was taking that one a bit literally, but honestly they really already do know everything they need to know. And let’s not forget that everything on your Lemmy is public - Do you really think that Google, Meta, and the rest of the usual suspects don’t have data crawlers on the fediverse hoovering up data and linking it to their existing shadow profiles?
I 100% agree that it would be best for Sync to have absolutely no tracking, but I’m just a bit baffled at everyone acting like this is some nefarious thing that Sync is doing that is in anyway novel. Do y’all really have 0 apps installed with google ads? Do y’all really all have custom ROMs flashed on your phone? None of you are reading this comment from Google Chrome, Edge, or Safari?
My point isn’t that ad tracking is good, it’s that saying that Sync is garbage because it has ads (and so, by necessity also has ad tracking) is almost certainly hypocritical in the case of every person whose saying it. “Let he without spyware on his phone cast the first stone” or something like that lol
I have no apps with google ads on my phone i run lineageos and all my apps come from fdroid except for a copy of volume booster goodev with the ads patched out(because i couldnt find a volume booster on fdroid)
There are companies that aggregate all the data from Google and other services to match your anonymous data to your actual person so they can match your address name and all personal information to what you do online
@ZippyZiggurat @drekly, it’s called create incommings by surveillance advertising, I call it Spyware as is.
They sell your data to third parties, which apart of a violation of your privacy rights, is a big security risk, nobody can control how your data is traty and protected, several cases of dataleaks with even bank and medical data prove this. There are other methodes to create incommings which don’t invade privacy.Not this way
(Test made with Blacklight https://themarkup.org/blacklight )Tell me more
That’s cause they’re all about my self interest🥰
This is a great post - I agree with your take.
The ads are what supports the developer. $20 to remove them is just a better bulk upfront deal than waiting for fractions of pennies to come together over time. The $100 version is a straight up grift though. I cannot overstate this, the ads are what supports the dev. There is nobody here not getting paid for their work.
I might be wrong, but the $99 one is for people who want to be a moderator of instances. I just want to doomscroll while taking a shit. So I kicked him $20. I think I paid the same amount for the reddit version, so 🤷
The $100 version is for perpetual access to a cloud-based service. As in something that is a recurring cost to the dev.
Where/when exactly do the ads pop up? I’ve been using for a few days now and I haven’t paid anything yet I see no ads. Is it a Beta thing?
A Sync user loves Lemmy enough to pay for it and isn’t wrapped up in drama spun by FOSS advocates. Be proud.
That being said, I love FOSS.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_open-source_software?wprov=sfla1
Had to look it up
Almost thought it was an app 🤣
Yeah nah fuck that Sync hate, I don’t use it personally but if someone wants to use it, all the best to them and have a jolly ride in the lemmy part of the fediverse
I used many Lemmy Android clients and after trying out Sync it is so good. It is not FOSS but it is high quality. Other FOSS apps are not mature enough yet and are unestable. I hope one day a FOSS one can compete and have high quality and I will switch
“I don’t use it myself” LIAR, BURN THE HERETIC
/s
I like sync because I don’t have to interact with or smell the poors. Good job sync team 👍
Agreed. Get your grubby FOSSy hands off my amazing app.
Actually I’d invite the FOSS developers to learn from UI of sync. If they get better, I’ll switch to FOSS apps, I’d contribute to FOSS if I had the time, but I don’t and their UI does feel unpolished. Used liftoff and jerboa before sync.
Infinity is pretty slick
Perfect response. I not usually one who is made fun of for being bougie, but why not pay for an app that I’ve used for nearly a decade and can easily afford?
If affording a cheap app is rich in your eyes…I have bad news for you.
Not everyone is made of money. In my country 20 USD is a whole month’s rent.
But… This analogy doesn’t work at all. Sync isn’t a community, it’s a client. So you’re interacting with the same people.
It’s a joke
Welcome buddy. Welcome all sync users. The greatest part of the decentriverse is it’s not yours or mine, it’s no one’s. Do as you please.
I found out about Lemmy BECAUSE of Sync. I’m a huge FOSS supporter but that doesn’t mean I’ll trash anything that isn’t open source.
Much more importantly, I’d really like to see Lemmy succeed against data mining trash like Reddit. Let’s not dissuade potential converts coming over from Reddit with this gatekeeping nonsense. These manipulative parasitic social media companies are the real enemy here. Sync is one guy making one app with a one time purchase. Everyone is still welcome to use open source apps, the website or any other means of accessing the community. Sync is not your enemy.
I found out about Lemmy BECAUSE of Sync
I had heard of lemmy in the days before the reddit blackout, but only when ljdawson said he was considering building sync for lemmy, did I actually join up.
I tried other clients before sync was actually out, and voyager is pretty good - but sync feels like home.
Why do people hate sync anyways
It’s cool to hate it, for a lot of people who moved to fediverse early, it’s a matter of FOSS software and an ideology. Everyone has a flexing point in their ideology, early adopters of fediverse can’t be flexible at closed source products. I personally draw my flexing boundary at large capitalist companies. Sync is developed by one guy and tbh with a way pretty UI than any of the FOSS software has (my personal opinion) so I like it. And I use it. But I understand the ideological point of FOSS everything, but I don’t understand people who want FOSS everything but they contribute nothing.
I understand why people want to use FOSS, but I don’t understand being annoyed that a non FOSS project costs money. It doesn’t take away your choice and only adds more choice and gives FOSS devs a target to make their apps better. I only see upsides to having more choices of clients. This isn’t some huge mega corporations trying to monopolize on a platform, it’s a small solo dev that’s making a client for a platform with an open standard that cannot be closed off by design. There’s no downside to having more competition. It’s not like sync will put the FOSS options out of business since they’re free hobby projects to begin with.
I agree that I’m not flexible with non FOSS software but at the same time I’m glad that this new app will bring more people to lemmy and the fediverse in general. I just in huge disagreement over the pricing policy out of principle. I’m glad the money is going to one person instead of a mega Corp but his app should have been priced at less than 10$ for a, lifetime and maybe 20 for ultra. More than 20$ for lifetime and 100$+ is bonkers and no regional pricing even. As good as his app is it is not anywhere near that value.
I appreciate you answering the question and being brave enough to step forward to do so.
I think what’s been confusing me is why so many lemmings feel they need to tell us which UX to use and whether we should value it one way or another…
They’ll say, “use what works for you” but… “it’s should be (almost free).” Making an absolute value judgment, no caveat or allowing for other tastes or bank accounts.
It’s just bad form. If it confuses them, I get it. Strict adherence to FOSS confuses me. But we can talk that through.
But I’m not going to tell them that they’re doing it wrong or that they’re objectively valuing FOSS incorrectly.
But that keeps happening to Sync. I appreciate you answering the question and engaging.
This need to continually tell us that we’re wrong for supporting the app and dev is mystifying to me.
It’s like me telling everyone to stop funding the instance because it’s paid through the end of the year. Even mentioning that the instance was/is healthy feels like poor form.
But if people aren’t sure the instance will endure, the engagement may not persist.
Yet lemmings have stirred the doubt-pot, too. The instance deserves support. The dev deserves support. Labor, any labor, cannot be expected to be free.
That’s my moral line. You may have another one. That’s fine. The above is my opinion, not objective fact.
I just don’t get the need to keep shitting on people enjoying an app or paying for it.
This guy… He gets it.
Once I was exactly like you described: “people who want FOSS everything but they contribute nothing”. Indeed, it was really bothering me to not contribute anything, but the reason was I didn’t have much confidence about my skills. I slowly break that barrier of lacking confidence.
If there are people out there like who I was, please just go and commit anything on any project, whatever it is, doesn’t matter.
I can’t wait till I am as confident as you sir. Till then, I may try updating documentation to help out
Documentation is a super important job!!! 🎉🎉🎉
So are translations. Quite a few apps benefit from translations, so if you speak two or more languages helping in translation is very easy.
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Are you… Disagreeing with every autocorrect your phone is giving you?
Holy shit! That was the most excruciating comment I’ve ever read. Like seriously, he literally dismissed everything his autocorrect tried to fix.
It almost feels deliberate but that seems like effort
I have a coworker who types like this, they might have turned it off altogether
I haven’t used autocorrect since I turned it off on my iPhone 3GS. It’s not that hard to not type like a lunatic.
They might be using a FOSS keyboard. I’m on Floris Board and there is currently no auto-correct.
Holy shit, it’s typo man! He does exist…
Cool for people who think their code is good enough to let other people read it. I code for 20 years professionally now, not reached that point yet.
Most code isn’t really that good, it’s just good enough. If you think your code isn’t good enough, you should just read the codebase you’re thinking about contributing to. It’s probably full of stuff you would have been embarrassed about.
Yep I’ve got hardcore imposters sydrome when it comes to coding.
I don’t hate it. What rubs me the wrong way is the $20 ask to remove ads, when alternative apps exists that don’t charge or even have ads yet. It feels far too steep for what it’s designed to handle, compared to Reddit. $5 would have been reasonable as an early bird deal, then $10 afterwards would have made more sense. Then add a tip jar for those who feel generous.
It’s a bit of a catch-22 because while Lemmy and the Sync for Lemmy userbase is small the dev needs to ask for more to keep the lights on.
If there was a larger pool of users who might potentially subscribe then the dev wouldn’t have to charge as much.
But from a user perspective it might seem like a smaller/newer platform like Lemmy doesn’t justify a higher cost.
For me personally I am happy to pay it because I used and loved Sync for years on Reddit and having had the experience with creating a Reddit app the dev has been able to provide a more complete/polished interface for Lemmy than possibly any other app available right now.
As a sync user, I agree, $20 is a steep price for what lemmy is currently offering. If I’m sure I’m gonna staying on lemmy for years (like I did for reddit), im probably gonna pay. But only time will tell. But so far the als I’ve seen are really not that frequent or intrusive, and I’m just happy I have sync back tbh.
But it is $30 on my end to remove the ads on sync. I completely agree with you, and I had sync for years. I am currently using Jerboa, and it fits my needs.
You just answered yourself there’s alternative apps. If you don’t want to pay for kid ads go use one of them. You don’t have to use sync
What rubs me the wrong way is the $20 ask to remove ads
I would feel the same way if Sync was the one and only option to view Lemmy on mobile but it’s not. You can use all the other FOSS apps which don’t have ads.
By the way you can install a global adblocker on your phone to remove all (well, most let’s say) ads across your device. I use one and don’t see any ads on Sync, just a blank square.
F that noise. I’m here and active because Sync came out, and I’ve become used to its interface over the years. I’ll eventually try the other FLOSS apps but I’m here learning and enjoying first.
Yeah, op, don’t feel shamed about using sync, it’s a great app that’s worth using. I use it. Lots of us use it. The hate is a knee-jerk reflex to the sudden influx of excited reddit sync users who have migrated to lemmy and talked a lot about sync. I think FOSS users were expecting a FOSS-type option and were shocked when that wasn’t the case. Then you also had users who were just mad that it would cost more to be used here than it was on reddit.
No one hates you for using sync.
Sync is what got me to really enjoy using Reddit. I’m proud to be a Sync user. lol .
I’m over here bouncing between Memmy and Voyager solely because I miss Apollo.
It’s amazing how much an interface matters thought I enjoyed Reddit when really I enjoyed Apollo.
My point is, I don’t know what Sync is but if it’s what you like then hell yeah use the shit out of it.
Sync was a great app for Reddit. I used it as my main for a while before I got my first iPhone. I honestly don’t understand all the hate for it here. There are several FOSS choices for Lemmy apps if anyone doesn’t like it.
Sync was Apollo but on Android.
Not precisely, they weren’t 1-for-1 clones. But when I moved from Android to iOS I was easily able to adapt to Apollo from Sync. Very similar visuals, very similar gestures, similar developer devotion.
Sync was not only my favorite app for reddit, but IMO the best UI/UX of any app I’ve ever used. I enjoyed Connect until Sync came out, but now that it has I feel like I can finally enjoy Lemmy as much as reddit. Everyone will have their preferences and prices they’re willing to pay, but $20 absolutely seems reasonable to me for how much I use it lol.
That is exactly how I felt about Apollo and the apps I mentioned earlier are absolutely allowing me to enjoy Lemmy.
I absolutely did not understand how to consume Lemmy before. But now… now I do.
Memmy is so fucking good.
How I feel using, and liking, Jerboa
Jerboa is a cute lil app
Couldn’t login on jerboa did they fix it? I’ve been using connect.
Back when the other site first shut down there was an update to jerboa that made any instance under v18 unusable. Which was most of them for about a week.
Ive been logging in just fine. I can also post threads, unlike with Synch which can’t.
Minimal design, easy on the eyes. Reminds me of rif. It’s absolutely perfect.
I installed it a while ago and I’m loving it ngl. (I never used sync tho. Was a Infinity and Boost user)
I’m on Jerboa too, what’s the problem with it? I like the rat
IDK what people are complaining about, the UI is good.
I can’t use apps that lag during simple scrolling so I never liked Jerboa. Quickly switched to Liftoff and now will switch to Sync I guess.
Also Jerboa has too few settings and that annoying post button that I rarely use stuck on screen.
I love FOSS but I too use Sync. Used it on Reddit for the better part of a decade and it’s made Lemmy more accessible for me and also some friends.
In the end if people are happy to pay for a client, which then builds the membership of Lemmy communities - what’s the big fucking deal? I’m very happy to be here and very happy to continue supporting a dev that does fantastic work.
Also using Sync. The thing is, I’m sick and tired of being told how I should need to interact with something. This isn’t an argument against FOSS at all btw. I also pay a non-FOSS one-man-shop for my RSS reader.
My main thing is I want to bend the web to my preferences instead of the other way around. If devs like this are going out of their way to do that I’m going to make it worth their while.
Shit, I even pay the guy who keeps the Chumby servers alive. Just so I can have a flash-baswd Star Trek themed clock face active on my nightstand.
People are ridiculous.
It’s ok to like the things you like, as long as you’re not like, directly hurting people.
If RiF made a LiF, I’d buy their ad free version too. I like the UI/UX. Connect is a good app, but it’s just not quite the same.
I wanted RIF to support Lemmy
is it confirmed it won’t? sync is okay, but RiF was simply better
RIF creator said he was developing for tildes, not lemmy.
I wouldn’t say they’ll never move to lemmy but that appears to be the case for the time being.
wtf is tildes
Another reddit alternative which I believe is focused on longer text posts and deeper discussions
I would be super stoked if the creator of RiF created something for Lemmy. But to Sync’s credit, I’ve been able to mess around a little with the settings and make my feed look like RiF in dark mode.
I won’t hold my breath for RiF making a comeback (LiF??). However if it does, I’m all in. It was a really sad day when I had to say goodbye to it.
I would put money toward that. I had RIF for years, and would love something to make Lemmy feel a little more familiar.
I haven’t messed with the settings yet, but the defaults are pretty much how I left sync before I uninstalled the Reddit client, but it used to be able to look basically however you wanted it, and if it can’t yet give it time. He’s a good dev.
