YSK: Lemmy browsing app Boost is tracking your data for profiling and more! Consider using other trackingless Lemmy apps such as Jerboa or Voyager
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/
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Comments224
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
(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
https://www.lemmyapps.com/ is a neat comparison site, but I'm not seeing any criteria around use of tracking data; is that just implied with the free vs paid column?
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.
They probably aren't using it lol
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!
I prefer to feed developers "flat food." Just slide it under the door!
Pizzas and pancakes!
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 paid for the product, I encourage and support products i like instead of seeing ads, whenever i can.
Just bought the ad-free version. It's easy to forget developers need to eat too
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 !
As someone who uses this daily, I had no idea there were ads... So I'm being tracked without knowing it. I'm... Not into this.
That's literally not the case. If you've purchased the app the ad logic isn't loaded, your porn habits aren't being tracked.
I didn't pay for the no ad addition. I just have never seen one. I am likely being tracked, though.
Next time, don't assume. Adguard dns may be blocking it. That makes this situation a problem.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
I don't know that much about marketing but I thought a loss leader was a specific product that attracts to the store in hopes to make a profit with other products. Put onions so cheap that people will come in and also buy potatoes and butter, and you make your profit on those.
So, stop using their service? That's the best way to eradicate google
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.
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.
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.
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.
Well yes, I'm just gonna watch Youtube videos ad free, how did you know
Same! Boost is awesome and it was a no brainer paying for the ad removal
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.
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.
Minus the "small amount" part.
Oh, yeah, fair.
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.
Yeah too many apps to choose from to care that much.
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?
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 his 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.
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 heading font for a title.
And spoiler markdown has 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, ruining the spoiler for tag for literally every non-Sync user. That made me so fucking mad!
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. What's fucking scam. I can't believe anyone still uses that app.
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.
YSK also that the paid version does not have ads or trackers
And, importantly, If your account is paid it never even loads the libraries or initializes the ad systems so there is zero data going to these trackers.
I don't use this app (I use Eternity), but there's nothing shady going on here. Developing an app isn't free and it isn't unfair for the developer to want to earn a living.
How do you know if you paid for the app? Can't find that section in my profile and I don't remember if I did.
[email protected]
Well simple, have you seen ads?
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
-13Goes to show that the first people to vote on stuff don't represent the community as a whole
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. 😅
Lol, it's not like they have a monopoly (a big base sure).
What they do is transparent, they let you know upfront, and the price for the app it low.
I'm not saying I like that model, so I don't use Boost, but this is far from megacorp strategy.
I don't like them because of the (ad) monetisation with the big corpos, but that's just me going 'eww', not me looking at Boost holding a gun to users saying this is the only way to interact with Lemmy.
(I go much more 'ewwwww' when I have to install an apk from Google store, via eg Aurora Store)
Also long live the (un??)dead Eternity, rofl.
Also, always use open sauce repos.
OP, you suck. This has been (falsely) reported before, and every time it gets shut down as fear-mongering. I really doubt you learned of this, did any kind of source checking or just looked it up without seeing the MANY disproving replies that are always there.
I've seen this enough times, this exact post, to where I'm certain it's consciously done false sensationalist crap. There are several other posts like this about other apps and services that get posted every couple of weeks/months and just like here they always get told off for their idiocy. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a group or person doing much of it, it's the exact same every time.
What's the explanation? AWS sounds like ad trackage.
The tracking is still a thing, it's just transparent about selling your location and purchase history data to Amazon and the like... So that makes it OK I guess?
No sir, I don't like it.
Then pay for the app. No tracking.
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.
It's also built into the Aurora Store (frontend for Google Play Store)
That's great info! Thanks for replying
I've seen this kind of post about boost several times now. It's just sad that people are just maliciously uninformed. It made me want to support the dev even more. Paying for the ad free version now.
-complains about people being uniformed.
-Does nothing to inform them.
Because other users in this thread have already given the relevant info.
I love how this post just contributed to more people paying for the paid version lol
I also just paid for no ads to support
Eternity still good
Yep it is. It's also free with no ads and open source.
Problem is it had no updates in 6 months. I had problems with images and such. For now i am for Voyager app. Its updated regulary
I think the images not loading issue has to do with Lemmy servers, as I see it on desktop web version all the time.
Well those problems persisted all the time on mobile for me, or some images needed to be opened in webview instead of the app.
Even though it's not updated, there's nothing wrong with it so far.
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.
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.
Connect dev here. In addition to no trackers we also have no ad SDKs, or analytics of any kind. Cheers!
Kuro and Connect are both 10/10
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
It has the same trackers problem as Boost.
i mean, it's just ads. you're blowing this way out of proportion just because of some unintrusive ads.
devs gotta eat. if you prefer FOSS, that's great! i love FOSS software too! but boost is like home to me, even with the ads.
I like the dissent towards ads. Pushes more folks to FOSS.
I tried and disliked both of those. They worked fine they just felt bad. Bad to digging around for clients.
ive been on Voyager and i like it very much. is there a known better option, or my first choice was a solid? thanks
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.
that's really insightful, I agree with your view. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you O/
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)
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.
AntennaPod is like 10x better than pocketcasts. Anytime someone asks for a podcast app, Foss or not, Antennapod is the first one brought up.
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.
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.
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.
This has actually been on my mind for a while now. Louis Rossmann and his consequences have been a disaster for the human race. He and his ilk talk about profiling in terms so sensationalist ("data stealing", "spying") that any connection to reality goes out the window and people become conspiratorial and paranoid. All reasoning about why it happens gets flattened to "they're evil" and there's no way to actually engage with the reasons.
I think I am one of the very few people who objects the correlation between streaming services DRM and data collection Louis talks about in his video where he tries to stream Netflix from a Linux box and gets 720p. "Piracy is absolutely justified" or sth like that was the title of the video.
You're missing the part where the lemmy and instance staff needs to get fed too. Donate to your instance the same as you would buy this app. If you use a free service for many hours, and you can spare a couple bucks, then spare it.
Nothing is immune to enshitification, not even non-shitified things.
To enshitify is human (it seems).
To grow past & beyond it is to stride for greatness, for the way forward for society to evolve.
Support foss you would like to see in the future, evolving into next gens.
And no, I do not mean support with ads of the evil megacorps!! I mean support by directly sending devs coffee or whatever the nice donation button says.
Raccoon is also a great alternative for trackerless Lemmy browsing, I personally prefer it over Jerboa and Voyager.
Yeah that's why I use the duckduckgo app tracking protection
Interesting
Edit: Doesn't work alongside VPN
You will only pry Boost from my phone over my cold dead hands.
I remembered Boost from the good old days a while back and am using it alongside voyager. It's not as great as I remembered, so I'll probably stick with Voyager. My home network keeps me safe of ads though 😉
Nice, I'm on the same boat. Voyager is superior to boost
On join-lemmy there is small warning for every closed source app
Aside from what everyone else has said regarding the ads: Boost is an amazing app and I don't browse Lemmy without it!
Would like to throw [email protected] in the ring as an alternative
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 use Sync. Does it track my data too?
Judging by the fact that the dev hasn't bothered to do anything with it in months, I doubt that it matters.
I too use it, I was curious as well and it seems (having installed duckduckgo because of another comment on this post) that there is tracking.
Given lack on maint I guess will look elsewhere regardless
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.
For what I can see, no. At least, not more than normal apps. A lot of apps comes up with the blocking tracking attempts (duckduckgo) by the company Google. Google is the only one with sync.
Edit: I have paid for the app.
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.
i use lemmy on firefox browser mobile and desktop?
Try the Photon WebApp client, there is public instances but you can self-host yours ! Still early but enjoying it so far !
Thanks. Just uninstalled it.
But that's one less app and there are great alternatives, so why continue using one that tracks you?
Use this app to make sure. It installs a local VPN to check connections, needs no root.
You do you, most goes with what's free and there are plenty of good free options available.
Ads are a bad way of funding the development, especially for Lemmy, a place where a lot of people are increasingly privacy-minded.
Because it doesn't?
It does. Check the official privacy policy, 9 mentions of trackers as well as the extremely limited options for opting out of the trackers.
Big 'yet you live in society. Curious" vibes.
Difficult for Android users.
What about connect?
Connect dev here. We have 0 trackers of any kind.
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.
Nooo, I hate useless margins (especially on the narrow side of the screen)! :D
Nice example! 😜
Glad I stick with Thunder.
I have no problems with devs making money on their work. But ads are a privacy violation for me.
If Thunder ever went this route I'd immediately fork.
Boost is great though, and the low cost to remove ads is worth it. Devs need to eat and stuff too, I just choose to support them directly instead of seeing ads.
I'm sure it's great, I haven't tried it in a while, though. I've also contributed to Thunder so I'm biased. A while back I tried them all, and personally found Thunder to be the most feature rich, which is why I went that way (and added tablet support).
Or you can buy Boost and get rid of the ad/tracking.
Boost is brilliant and other apps still have catching up to do but the competition is getting better and better.
I've used boost for forever in reddit, I used it when it came to lemmy.
But voyager is better.
Will give it a shot, thanks! Though I'm very happy with boost currently - what does voyager do better?
Yes give it a try.
I'm not saying that boost lacks anything. But it's the feel that I get when using Voyager. I know it's weird, but, it's my enjoyment that made me switch.
It really whips the llamas ass
I just wanna use one that has material design/material you, so it looks good in my Android phone
Can check out Eternity
Thunder has a toggle for Material You
Voyager has two themes: one uses Material design for Android users and one uses the old Apollo look-and-feel for iOS users.
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.
Jerboa is very cool and works great
Boost is the best!
Launch the Rocket! 🚀
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.
It's just hard to worry about some app tells Amazon what I like so they can sell me one brand of socks over another brand of socks, when I got a whole real life going on with bills, wife, kids, work, home maintenance, health, love, stress, ups, downs.
I do absolutely nothing if consequence on social media. If they wanna train their Algo on my lemmy habits God speed brother. I'm busy enough just trying to exist into next week.
I'm grateful to those who can fight the fight but for 99.99% of the population we cant participate in the fight with you.
Big fan Of Sync, but idk if it has tracking
God damnit, I use this app
Consider paying the one-time fee if you enjoy the experience, it will remove ads and tracking. You can also consider other client such as Voyager which is FOSS.
Oh, I paid for it from the start. Guess I'm fine then
[email protected] is great.
What about "Eternity"? I love it for Lemmy and no ads
Awesome and smooth UI
Eternity is good, sadly it's rarely gets update from dev
you guys are not blocking trackers?
https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/reports/search/com.rubenmayayo.reddit/
I find it funny that one app is called Jerboa which is a local delicacy in Najd and other parts of the Arabian Peninsula.
I am personally happy with the web app.
An up front paid app for devs trying to make money off of the lemmyverse? Sure, okay. A free version by devs trying to make the world a better place? You're a literal hero. Devs doing shady tracking like this? Never ever.
i so want to downvote you
It's an imperfect world and I don't blame you.
But they're not? The first time you install/open the app it tells you that to be able to serve ads it has to track you to some extent. And if you get the paid version it doesn't even load the apk for the ads
Yeah but this is just a lie, they just choose advertising providers that work like that
Jerboa is better apps
ok. I don't mind. this does not bother me at all.
Stop using boost ages ago. The lack of updates makes the app
unusablehardly usable anyway.News to me. Boost is not only extremely usable, it's more so than the others I tried, which was basically all the android apps.
Try more apps, my friend.
https://www.lemmyapps.com/
I have tried most of the android apps there which haven't been abandoned.
Also, not updating frequently isn't necessarily a bad thing. I don't see bugginess and the only feature I actually want but don't have is spoiler formatting.
In the end, the other apps feel either glitchy, too complicated, or ugly. Sync for example. If the configuration UI was way simpler, I'd probably have used it. But it wasn't and I had to dick around with settings a lot in various menus to get it about 95% as nice as boost. Why not just use the one with sane defaults? I'm good with giving $4 for software I like and use daily.
I hope you have donated to your lemmy instance too.
I'm not sure why you're bringing that up, but I have been donating.
Cool just reminding. Insance is more important.
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.
Nope, you can't actually do that anymore since there's SSL in the way. I tried anyway, though, just for giggles:
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 browser
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.
I 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 !
Lemmy looks and works fine in a mobile browser; why do you even need an app?
Gestures, user tagging, UI improvements.
On mobile web on the default Lemmy UI, you need to scroll to the top to get to other communities and change the sorting of posts and comments, where it's way more accessible on apps.