$20 to support a solo dev AND remove ads from his awesome lemmy client? Sweet!
Yeah, why are some people saying it’s a hundred dollars? I’m still using the free version, but my Google Play page is saying 20 bucks. I don’t know where that extra 80 is coming from
Sync ultra
Are there any Lemmy apps that actually let you click and highlight a parent comment and then click on a next button to automatically and instantly scroll to the next apparent level comment? RiF (Reddit is fun) had that feature and I can’t believe I’m not seeing it on either connect for Lemmy or that sync app.
Mother of God. Thanks!
In sync if you long press on a comment it’ll collapse all children… admittedly it’s different than what you were describing but it’ll have a similar effect. Lmk if you want a screenshot or something.
And you can toggle it to be single click, not hold because sync likes config options
You can also hide the clicked (parent) comment too. I don’t personally use it, to keep an overview, but it allows going through comments with much less scrolling.
Same in Connect ;)
AND remove ads
See that’s what I find obnoxious. IMO programs should not have advertising because nothing should have advertising. Advertising is capitalist conditioning. It shoves consumerism down our throats. The last thing we need now is more mindless consumption!
I suppose that if you don’t have any contempt for or opposition to advertising then there really isn’t a reason to complain. But I really wish people would take a stand against advertisement, or more generally capitalism and consumerism. Really, who would choose an application where space is wasted on selling them crap when any other option is available? I think such a choice is influenced by the idea that advertising is an inherent part of life, an idea which needs to be countered whenever it crops up. You should be free to make choices that others find irrational of course, but I still think that we need to step up and counter the logic that advertising is some neutral force.
If the developer wants to monetize the program, he could find some other way to do it, such as luxury features, premium support, or premium feature requests. However, my view is that things that occur primarily to make money should probably not occur at all, and that they only happen because capitalism has been imposed upon us. Said differently: if you don’t want to develop an app, then just don’t do it. I’m absolutely willing to compensate you for your work, and I know that we all need to make a living (under capitalism!), but if the money is forcing you to do it, then clearly you wouldn’t do it in a free environment [1].
But at the end of the day, I cannot stress enough how sick I am of being advertised to. No, I don’t want to buy your product. If I want to obtain something, I will go to your website or subscribe to your mailing list, or otherwise proactively indicate my interest. If you want to promote stuff, promote your own stuff or stuff , so ince you think your audience/customers would be interested in, because I’ve already somehow explicitly indicated that I’m interested in your affairs/wares. So I’ve made it a goal to expel advertising from all aspects of my life.
[1] Yes, this would imply that the vast majority of workers would drop out of the workforce and go do things that they enjoy. This would be a good thing. We don’t need to waste all our time doing “productive” stuff anymore.
I too dream of a world where we’ve moved on from capitalism to a socialist utopia like is in the United Federation of Planets, but we are not currently in that world. So until that time, we all have to earn a living to pay our landlords and feed ourselves.
For most things we are given a choice between ads or paying, and I almost always choose paying for no ads as I can’t stand them either. But until developers can live without bills and only do work for free because they enjoy it, our choice remains pay for no ads or be served ads. So I paid for no ads.
So I deleted the original comment because I found out that there was more to the Sync story than just advertising, and I realized that my comment wasn’t up to snuff. I didn’t mean to deceive anyone.
But until developers can live without bills and only do work for free because they enjoy it, our choice remains pay for no ads or be served ads.
That was exactly my point though: we do not have only two choices [(1) to pay for no ads and (2) to be served ads]. I listed some some alternative monetization schemes that don’t encourage consumerism. Namely, premium support for paying users, custom feature requests for users willing to pay the development cost, or luxury features that, while nice to have, aren’t necessary for the functioning of the app.
This point was probably in response to the section of the deleted comment where I argued that stuff that is done only for money probably shouldn’t happen at all. I stand by that. However, I do recognize the need for developers to eat. (I thought I said as much in the deleted comment.) For this reason, I use all sorts of software that I have paid for, and will continue to do so [2]. However, I will not pay a developer for their software if the functionality they’re selling me is “not having ads,” because ads shouldn’t exist.
I shouldn’t have to pay for my software not to kick me in the balls; similarly, I shouldn’t have have to pay for my software not to show me ads. Unlike being kicked in the balls [1], every waking moment of my life up until recently has been crammed with ads.
There are an infinite number of ways to make money that don’t require advertising, and I would be willing to pay for them in general [2]. Hell, I’ll be willing to donate for no reward [2]. I’m not against making money in an arbitrary way (at least under current conditions), but I most certainly oppose advertising as a specific way of making money.
[1] I’m not “into” that, but in case it isn’t clear, I would rather be kicked in the balls than see one more godforsaken advertisement. I cannot stress enough how much I hate advertising.
[2] …once I have a non-zero income.
Instead of seeing it as a charge to remove ads, maybe look at it as buying the ad free app from the dev? That’s how I see it. And giving people the option to use the app for free with ads is IMO a decent trade off.
maybe look at it as buying the ad free app from the dev?
I would rather just give the dev money for literally nothing if it allows everyone else an ad-free experience. Literally the second I get a non-zero income, I’ll begin donating to FOSS projects.
And giving people the option to use the app for free with ads is IMO a decent trade off.
I mean it’s a better tradeoff than “pay vs. be excluded”, but I don’t think people fully realize the tradeoff they’re making: time is a lot more valuable than money in my view. No matter how much money you throw at the problem, you will eventually run out of time and die. Your time is precious! If that’s the tradeoff you want to make then it would be wrong of me to stop you, but I really wish that people would stop and think “do I really want to spend my finite time on this miserable planet on this?”.
I’ve spent more than enough of my time being bored by advertisements, and even as I try to remove them from my life, people close to me insist that I waste my time on ads because they want to show me something but they were too lazy to install an adblocker. Ads are constantly being blasted from my parents’ and grandmother’s TV’s, they invade our computers, they even talk about ads at the dinner table. It breaks my heart.
I know that my anti-advertisement position is a bit extreme, but I feel like I have to push back against the constant intrusions of capitalism into our personal lives, advertising being the primary front of this battle. Of course I’m willing to agree to disagree, but I still feel it necessary to debate this.
You know you’re not paying for “no ads” right? You’re simply using an alternative payment method. If somebody can’t afford something you’re suggesting we exclude them? Make it paid for only? The ads serve as payment for those without the means or are just unwilling to pay and still get the same options as everyone else. For someone that hates capitalism you’re sure good at preaching it.
Whaaaat noooo. Silly. The dev should just cater to people with money or quit their source of income and be happy… Or something?
The ads serve as payment for those without the means or are just unwilling to pay and still get the same options as everyone else.
That’s an interesting perspective. The way I see it though, the cost you pay in advertising, besides program functionality, is time. No matter how much money Jeff Bezos gets, eventually he will die. Your time is precious. Advertising is a waste of time on an unfathomable scale. I think that most people don’t fully understand the tradeoff they’re making by giving their time to advertisements because we’ve been conditioned not to think critically about how we use our time. This allows capitalists to easily exploit people into doing tedious work for them, saving them time. A lot of people assume that there’s a whole life after the lights go out, and they’re wasting their time under the assumption that their time in the afterlife will be infinite.
If somebody can’t afford something you’re suggesting we exclude them?
Generally speaking, no. I brought up some specific examples of reasonable ways to monetize software:
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Custom feature request: you can pay the development cost for a large custom feature that becomes available to everyone. For example, let’s say I’m using an office software on x86-64, and I want the developers to port a version for ARM64 and help me deploy it on hundreds of Raspberry Pi’s. They’re probably not going to do that for free. Maybe someone else will do it, but if I need to make it happen, I’m willing to pay someone for their time! Ordinary bug fixes and feature requests for free customers would still be honored.
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Luxury features: for example, icon packs [1], custom colors [1], and extra fonts. For each item, this only includes those items which don’t affect accessibility and function; for example, it wouldn’t be cool to charge extra for a Sans-Serif font option, because Sans-Serif fonts are, generally speaking, easier for low-vision people to read. However, I don’t think there would be too much of an issue with charging for some Sans-Serif font as long a reasonable selection of them are installed for free [2]. The full functionality of the app should be available to all users, including and especially those who can’t afford to pay.
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Premium support for paying users: some users are going to require more support than others. For example, let’s say I want to deploy an office software on 1000 computers, and I want to get constant support for my users to transition to the software. In the current economic system, it absolutely makes sense to charge for that as a service under the assumption that, if you need that level of support, you can probably afford to pay for the required development time and manpower to take on such a large project and still have time to assist other users.
Frankly, I think that people who cannot afford to pay for the software should simply get it for free. You shouldn’t have to pay in any way, cash or otherwise. The dev isn’t going to get a transaction if I can’t pay for it; might as well just give it away. If you don’t, I’m totally going to steal it anyways. Those who can pay probably should, and I will do so once I get a non-zero income.
However, if you’re going to sell anything, I think it is least damaging to sell only those parts that users do not need to use the program. You shouldn’t sell any part of the program if you can avoid it, but if you can’t, sell the unimportant stuff.
I suppose that if the choice is exclusively between paying with cash and paying by watching advertisements, and that choice is immutably carved into the fabric of the universe, then I suppose that it makes sense to have a choice [3]. However, it is my entire point that these are not the only options. One choice could be to not pay and just get it for free. This is the choice pirates will make, including myself. Another could be to pay some other way, or make some less damaging subset of the program be the item you pay for. Someone more creative than me could probably devise a more interesting business model.
For someone that hates capitalism you’re sure good at preaching it.
I appreciate critiques like these, but I will reiterate that I have absolutely no income at the moment, so I would be locked out of all the things I proposed. I’m not going to advocate for my own oppression. I’ve come up with those specific examples of monetization schemes as the least damaging I could think of.
[1] If I remember correctly, Reddit tried a scam where they made the default icon obviously ugly and then charged for the one people want. Additionally, I understand that color schemes can be important for accessibility purposes, for example in the case of color blindness. My point is that there should be a reasonable amount of icons and theming to accomodate all users. Beyond that, it is least damaging to charge for additional cosmetic changes.
[2] This is a feature I would be more likely to pay for because I’m really fucking picky about fonts. I’m low-vision myself, but as far as reading is concerned most of the traditional fonts work well enough; they just look kinda crappy.
[3] In situations where these are imposed to be the only options, I elect not to use it. I’ve lost out on a lot of opportunities because of my opposition to advertisements, and more broadly capitalism!
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I’m gonna be really happy when school is back in session.
Can’t we just be happy that we’re not on Reddit instead of fighting over which UI we prefer!?
Agreed.
The fact we can even pick between multiple UIs is a blessing lol
Maybe the real Reddit was the arguments with friends we made along the way
Aw that’s sweet
Fuck you
Awww, fuck you too!
I feel at home <3
Aww I missed the wholesome Reddit moments.
We’re ALL Reddit/Lemmy on this blessed day.
Many of us left reddit due to which
AIUI we prefer. So I can see why this happens now.Not picking on you, but I see people use “AI” instead of “UI” more and more these days and I wonder if it’s part of the reason all startups suddenly feel like they have to introduce AI features — everyone keeps talking about how important it is after all
In my case it is auto correct on my phone. Maybe because people text about AI so much that their auto correct thinks it is supposed to be AI instead of UI. Like mine did.
I wonder what these people think AI means…
I thought it was due to wanting to try a non corporate alternative to social media. Before Spez mishandling of the incident I was ready to just use old.reddit.com on Firefox and figure out how to get RES onto mobile, or just use it less and more on desktop only. Had he just quietly let the protest pass by without throwing a tantrum I’d probably still be using reddit.
Had he just quietly let the protest pass by without throwing a tantrum I’d probably still be using reddit.
Honestly, if reddit has just been upfront and said “we need to consolidate where people browse our site on mobile for our IPO”, people would still have been annoyed but i don’t think all the drama would have taken place. The issue was really just in the way that the management handled the situation by giving devs a “fuck you” API pricing and acting like TPA devs were being unreasonable for not wanting to pay the ridiculous fees. If they had just been upfront and honest then I don’t think I’d be here on lemmy.
That plays a role for a lot of people probably. I’d think the majority got ripped over the edge by the third party app thing because the default UI in the app and browser are just worse.
Didn’t most of us? If you were happy using reddit app you are almost certainly still drooling on yourself scrolling through the super sexy posts on /askreddit and think Lemmy is probably the name of a band that nerds like.
I’m not fighting, I just want sync users to shut the fuck up and stop advertising their app at every possible minute, because those of us who aren’t using it have already decided it isn’t the one for us.
Me using browser ui:
The only objectively wrong option
It’s a lot better than reddit’s or Facebook’s mobile website. Facebook used to have a pretty good mobile website, but they have intentionally ruined it over several years to try to force people to the app. Reddit has done the same thing, but but has been a lot more aggressive about it lately, up to straight up blocking mobile users on the site, and telling them to use the app or fuck off. That was what finally drove me away. It was only an A/B test, but it reveals the user hostile attitude that is at the core of the rot in reddit management.
federa.net a custom dark css, and I think it looks pretty nice.
I miss the pro version I had without ads… I’ll probably end up jumping ship if that isn’t an option.
There is. You can remove ads. It initially wasn’t an option as he didn’t feel like it was at a point yet to have a charged option, while the subscription service was aimed at users willing to help fund development. That confusion caused the back lash so he added the remove ad option in the next update.
Woah, it’s $20. I don’t remember it being so expensive for Reddit, but I’m sure I also bought it several years ago. Thanks for the info.
Yeah it was a bit of a shock to me too, but also considering the level of polish it already has and the features it can still get, I feel like it’s more than worth it for me.
It was cheaper on Reddit yeah. But after years and years of enjoyment from my most used app, I’m happy to pay whatever he asks for the new version for Lemmy.
It was some sticker shock, but I bought it. What mostly caught me off guard is it was more than my Google Play balance from using the Google Rewards.
Just to clarify where it is, tap on your account icon in the top left and you’ll see the option there.
Is it considered wrong meme because Sync for Lemmy is only available on Android, while the meme is using an older iPhone?
Shit! The meme is using the wrong phone! It’s meaning is lost!!!
It is meaning is lost!!!
🤣
I just feel like I’m back on kuro5hin
Now that’s a name
hot grits, yadda yadda, +5 troll, yadda yadda, netcraft confirms it
It does seem like a large number of Lemmy users are elitist snobs. I thought this place was turning out better than Reddit, but it’s looking like I was wrong. People like that ruin platforms like this and sour the experience.
FOSS and focus on privacy does that to some people, they feel superior because they worry about those things they see as being beneficial.
I’m sure many of the users from the before time were here specifically to not use a closed source, data gathering platform, so they’re a bigger proportion of users than they were on Reddit and they tolerate the most extreme elements of their community that also happen to be the most vocal.
TL;DR: Reddit is for normies and now normies are on a platform where radicals were everywhere and part of the majority before they arrived.
Sometimes those extreme privacy preachers remind me of doomsday preppers.
I too reduced my data finger print, started using uBlock, thought more often if the data in a registration form is really needed for the service they provide (and didn’t register when in doubt), and so on…
I don’t have Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter (anymore), the only things I have are Reddit, Lemmy and Mastodon.
Still I don’t inspect every bit going through my network with Wireshark and PiHole to see, if some packet sent while watching a movie may contain personal data. At some point you gotta live a little instead of full-time fear mongering, doomsday preaching for the tech apocalypse.
I have reduced my digital fingerprints by a large margin with common sense, I don’t need a 100% privacy speedrun, what counts is that you do something. And the effects show, especially in the form of less spam and recommendations for items you’ll never need.
Google knows which topics I search for, big whoop, wouldn’t be much of a search engine otherwise.
There are many entitled people here. Some of them are from linux community. Anything other than that is bad and 1000 posts related to that. Another is sync and other apps. Especially open source only good, closed source everything bad. My feed was full of that. Even though I am a sync user i feel angry when seeing so many non sense posts supporting and against that. Even some communities not related to these are posting this.
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Not wanting to use any app that goes to a google server for a lemmy app is being privacy focused. Telling other people their preference in not valuing the same thing is wrong is elitism - saying that no app should do something, and nobody else should use an app that does that thing, because you prefer it that way - that’s elitism.
Sync and the people who like it aren’t invalid just because your preference is being privacy focused.
Along the same lines, it’s totally possible to espouse the values of privacy to others without being elitist, as long as you aren’t talking down to other people or invalidating other people’s preferences, because that’s elitism.
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I’m saying it’s my choice where I want to send my data.
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It’s not your choice stop arguing
So? If you’re running an unaltered vendor version of Android chances are incredibly high much of this information has already reached Google, Meta or any other mega corp. You’re shit outta luck here boy.
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No, it is elitism and gatekeeping
The reason why many people swapped was because Lemmy harbors smarter individuals. I need to feel superior simply because I use Lemmy, Otherwise there’s no point.
Toughen up, elitist jackasses are everywhere, they were even on reddit before we left. It’ll pass.
Surely we can agree it’s better to have too many choices rather than having some greedy piggy ban them all.
Obligatory G’day from the kbin PWA :)
We’re still waiting for our native app.
Eventually ❤️
Can’t wait for Sync to let me login to my kbin account too! Also, I greatly prefer kbins showing the upvotes and downvotes on posts, wish Lemmy had that…
Personally, I don’t give a flying fuck what client any of you use as long as you are here. :)
Hear hear!
This shit wouldn’t be fun if we didn’t fight and shit talk each other from time to time. And I mean in general, not on the subject of the week. I’m the kind of person who will compliment a insult directed at me if it’s creative or pause an argument for some “real talk”. We are on earth for a short time, please don’t take any of this shit seriously.
very real
So far the only community I have blocked is the synch for lemmy community, because of the massive spam of posts about synch.
So can we please stop spamming about it in other communities too.
99% of the sync spam I’ve seen has been from every community other than the sync community. I saw maybe 3 posts from there saying they liked the app and that’s it, and everywhere else I see posts from people having a fit over using or not using 1 out of like, what, 10 available apps? The spam really isn’t coming from the sync community specifically to begin with tbh.
Yeah lol. All the spam I’ve seen comes from the meme communities that had multiple posts complaining about Sync. Like I’ve seen more people complain it isn’t FOSS than anything else so far.
Only other major times I’ve seen it across lemmy was when it was up for pre-registration and when it came out. The former seemed to be spammed a ton because people thought it had actually came out and tried to spread the word & the latter was just people posting when it actually came out.
The complaining feels the same as when reddit mobile users kept laughing about 3rd party apps to feel superior in some way. I saw some actually comment how stupid some 3rd party app users were for paying for a paid app or subscription to view reddit when the official app was free.
I’m just going to ignore the rest of these posts after this and hide them. It all just makes them look obnoxious and full of themselves. Basically the type of shit that made me happy to leave Reddit.
Lol that’s an iPhone.
Sh!! 🤫 Meme…
I know, the iPhone makes it perfect.
Shhhh. I couldn’t find an equivalent meme with Android (I didn’t even notice TBH), so pretend I hacked an iPhone to run android 😂.
How to do?
No clue lol. But I’m sure it’s possible.
My reply to all the naysayers:
Thanks for making Lemmy feel like home, it wouldn’t without you!
The reality is it’s a free world, regardless of what morality you put on things there are going to be things that happen that you don’t like. That’s life.
Like it or not Lemmy has had explosive growth because of apps like Sync. Because of them being killed off by Reddit. If it weren’t for the drama of Reddit doing that, I and millions of other users wouldn’t be here right now as we’d still be on Reddit.
Even people who weren’t using the 3rd party apps left Reddit because Reddit’s actions left a bad taste in their mouths.
So, morality of one guy charging for his honest work in creating the paid or ad supported app aside, you should be thanking the apps including sync for helping drive so many users to Lemmy.
If you yourself don’t want to use a paid app, then that’s okay! We’re all allowed to respond or react to things how we want, but being incredibly divisive for something that a lot of people wanted and that really is inconsequential is almost universally frowned on.
Just let people do what they want and don’t shoot them down for it. More options for browsing Lemmy = more Lemmings = more content.
Much love my dudes! We may disagree on this but we agree on many many many more things I’m sure, just because we’re on Lemmy instead of Reddit in the first place is proof of that! ✌️
Well put. Also, I hope this whole topic dies soon.
Me too. I can’t wait for the next subject of Lemmy drama! It makes me feel alive! 😂
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