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/
This is a rather sensationalist headline.
Every so often software developers need to eat food and live beneath shelter.
The developer of Boost @rmayayo@lemmy.world 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
Dev here.
The dialog and its content is not created by me, it is a standard solution from Google to comply with GDPR and other laws. More info here: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/10114014?hl=en
The consent dialog is also required by Google AdMob to show ads, and it is shown when the ad network is initialized.
When the app launches, first it checks for the remove ads purchase, and if it is not present, it will initialize the ads sdk. The ad network is not initialized if the remove ads purchase is detected.
Boost for Reddit was using the very same ad networks and consent dialog.
(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
Just bought the ad-free version. It’s easy to forget developers need to eat too
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!
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 prefer to feed developers “flat food.” Just slide it under the door!
Pizzas and pancakes!
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.
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
-complains about people being uniformed.
-Does nothing to inform them.
Because other users in this thread have already given the relevant info.
This reads like a paid advertisement.
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.
Aside from what everyone else has said regarding the ads: Boost is an amazing app and I don’t browse Lemmy without it!
yeah the ad free version is cheap and a real delight! I don’t get why these people are making such a big deal out of it
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.
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
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
Eternity still good
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 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.
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.
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/
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.
Thanks. Just uninstalled it.
good now delete every other app on your phone that contains Google ads
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 his work.
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.
