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/

  • Rogue@feddit.uk
    1·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Sonalder@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 year ago

      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 !

    • Otter@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      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