What constitutes Usage Data. Is it sharing the posts I view, communities I subscribe to etc?
Does paying for a premium version stop this data being collected?
From DuckDuckGo:
For what it’s worth, I subscribed to Ultra about an hour ago and DDG hasn’t picked up any additional tracking attempts since then. I think it may be limited entirely to Google’s ad service for the free, ad-supported tier and maybe crash diagnostics that the app gives you the option of enabling or disabling.
I think that the lack of further attempts backs up what lj shared a bit ago in the Discord. That’s still a hell of a lot of tracking for folks who can’t or don’t want to pay, though.
Sure would be cool if this kind of information was provided outside of a proprietary service that not only requires a login but also you to join a specific server just to then have this be hidden by 1,500 random messages that you don’t care about. Shame there is no such place.
Can someone explain what this means. The ads/tracking is not activated in Sync for Lemmy? If so, why have it in the code.
Basically all tracking is done by Google ads. It checks at start up if you have purchased ad free or not. If purchased, launch app without ad library, else launch with ads. It has to be in the code because (according to the dev) Google is cracking down on similar apps, ie a pro version and a free version. So ad library has to be included, and it just won’t use it if you pay for pro
Please note that the long list of things collected is what Google is known to collect, not necessarily that these are the things being collected. If you click on any other app that is also with Google trackers (practically every app listed on this page), you will find that the stuff listed are the same.
Can you explain more? Would DNS level blocking stop ads on a smart TV (for YouTube specifically) as well?
I am so happy whenever I see people asking more about privacy practices. It makes me feel like the fight is not so hopeless after all.
Tracker blocking youtube results in new videos not adding to your history, recommendations freezing permanently, youtube just regurgitates the same stuff and seemingly never refreshes
I would really love to know what ads are targeting low battery levels. Chargers and battery packs obviously. But I wonder what else being at 5% tells you about a person 😅
Could be device fingerprinting
It is their browser. The tracking protection is in their browser and tells Android that it’s a VPN.
Doesn’t this ad/subscription model, go against the grain a bit? With Lemmy & the fediverse in general, being an opensource environment, which has no ads, & funded by donations, rather than a subscription model…
No, it doesn’t. Unlike Reddit, Twitter, or Threads, Lemmy offers a variety of apps. There are so many that there is something for everyone. Even a “professional” app that finances itself with advertising or a subscription is allowed. The special thing about Lemmy is the freedom of choice.
Funding your project with donations is just not a realistic long-term goal. This is why so many instances fold up shop in just a couple of weeks as their servers are overloaded and no one donates money to keep it up.
Capitalism is a problem but it doesn’t mean everything has to be socialism. There can be an in-between.
Capitalism is a problem but it doesn’t mean everything has to be socialism. There can be an in-between.
It’s not even that to be honest. Socialism is characterized by worker ownership and operation of companies primarily. LJ is a sole proprietor exploiting nobody, not earning a wage via labor and not having to work because he under pays others to work for him. He’s just a worker like the rest of us.
I definitely agree that donations is not a viable long term path. Maybe in a different economic model. People need to be realistic. The general arguments they are making against Sync in favor of FOSS apps can also be made against them using FOSS apps by the FLOSS folks. People should pay if they can. And use a free third party app if they can’t, or don’t like how sync works.
I really don’t get the hate people are putting out there over this. This is why third party apps build strong ecosystems. You can find what you want.
I believe its possible, at least coming from the minecraft world. if the instance doesnt grow as big as lemmy.world or something then you can ask for patrons and other ways to get donations. a lot of the plugins I use for my minecraft servers are run this way and its the way i run my server, I just ask for a dollar donation if possible from my players and that covers a little bit more than what the server costs me to run. when I check some of the plugin’s patreon page they pull in about 1k-8k a month
https://www.patreon.com/coreprotect
Even if it was socialism, that doesn’t mean money doesn’t exist lol, there would have to be some kind of tax added on for everyone to support the product/project/whatever.
We have socialized fire departments in America, does that mean they don’t get paid and work for free? Nah, but you don’t get a bill before they put the fire out on your house either
You’re free to use any app you want. Some people prefer free open-source apps, some people want to pay for a quality app. It’s good to have a choice unlike with Reddit. I don’t understand people complaining about having additional choice because they don’t like it.
Some people want to keep the Fediverse ecosystem completely pure in terms of free software, and they will yell at you if you don’t play along.
I don’t have an issue with a reasonable subscription, but hard pass on trackers, especially when you’re paying.
Not defending tracking or anything, but you do not get trackers if you pay. This tracker is just for ads, which you don’t get if you pay.
The issue for me is having the code. If I pay, I want an app without the ads/trackers code.
There are plenty of apps for Lemmy, that aren’t supported by ads, nor should they be, given the whole ethos of the fediverse…
The ethos of the fediverse (insofar as it’s completely free with no ads) won’t be sustainable at scale; income for continued development and support does need to be taken into account at some point, and that goes for servers, frontends, apps, etc. Funding from donations only gets you so far. We will have to talk about it some day.
However, it is entirely too soon for ads and subscriptions. This feels openly and brazenly like talking advantage of Sync overly enthusiastic fanclub and the Sync name recognition. Get in early with a big name and start making money before any other big name apps like Boost are released.
My go-to analogy is Usenet. Back when usenet basically was the internet for a lot of people, you’d have access to a usenet server through your school, isp, or with a separate subscription to a usenet provider. Usenet itself was free and there were open source implementations of the client and server side components. There were also commercial implementations. The important thing was that net news ran on an open protocol that no company owned. Companies and individuals were free to do what they wanted.
I would not hesitate to buy a client that achieved the functionality of Apollo, or even Alien Blue. I didn’t really start using reddit until I had a good client, and I can see client-side issues being a hurdle to lemmy adoption. I’d prefer paying for a client over ad support. Still, the free and open source client community should be core going forward. I can even see the potential for a commercial server, once the community reaches critical mass in terms of content.
I’ve been involved with the foss community since my first linux install back in like 1994 or so. I remember when rms and esr were household names, so long as your household was a dorm room with cs majors. Like with linux (gnu/linux?) commercial and foss apps can co-exist, and like with linux there should remain a foss purist option in addition to the mixed mode option.
I don’t think the fediverse is facing a threat of commercial takeover - certainly not the lemmyverse. If anything, the threat is not onboarding enough people to be competitive with whatever reddit clone manages to launch in the next year or so, and which has the commercial backing to drive users to the service and have stable, scalable, and production quality code.
Just imagine: Microsoft creating a lemmy.xbox.com and creating centralized gaming communities like !halo@lemmy.xbox.com or !doom@lemmy.bethesda.com instead of hosting it on discord or reddit.
The only issue I see with it are:
- Liability: They would probably need to disable signups for external users and only allow federation And even then user submitted stuff could be tricky. Tbf (in a halo example I am familiar) they run forums so idk…
- Ease of use: Lemmy is not easy to understand for aunt Emma or uncle Smitherson. Heck even regular parents are probably overwhelmed by the selection of communities on reddit…
- Anything else?
This was my thought as well. It makes sense for companies to setup their own Fediverse instances. It provides them a way to reach their customers without having to rely on another company acting as the middleman.
Mastodon is really solid and with the Dutch government and the BBC running their own instance I imagine others will follow suite.
Still not sure about a Reddit replacement though since both Lemmy and kBin have their problems.
Spin up a PeerTube instance and companies have an effective means of setting up discussion forums for their products, a news feed for broadcasting updates, and a video hosting solution that can all be tied together through the Fediverse.
I totally get that. I watched in real time when MS tried to kill Netscape by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows and used their “embrace and extend” business model to try to reserve the web for their proprietary browser. Ot didn’t work, but there was a lot of pushback both legally and socially.
I think that we don’t have to worry about MS coming in for a while. I am interested to see how Facebook makes things work if and when they integrate Threads, but afaik no one is in an analogous position in terms of making a commercial, reddit-like experience tied to the fediverse.
I mean, reddit’s model isn’t that great. They filed for an IPO on Dec 21 for $15B and since then have been marked down to about $5B, and that was before the APIpocalypse. That means that a) all of the current institutional and VC investors lost about 2/3 of their money and that spez and company have similarly seen their ineptitude slash their dreams of Musk-like wealth, and b) value-wise, they’re heading back to 2019 when they were smaller. It’s a terrible time for them to try doing an IPO. The fact that they haven’t pulled it makes it feel like they know the game of musical chairs is winding up and they just want to get out with even a quarter of what they expected.
!halo and !doom community at lemmy.xbox.com wow!
That means we’re in very early days of Lemmy.
Surprising times ahead!
I got to that exact screen and my excitement went from 100 to like 10. I’m back on Connect, didn’t even take Sync out for a spin.
I was just pointed towards infinity for Lemmy. It’s pretty solid, open source, no ads
The exact same for me, and I had just made a new account to use with sync for lemmy - logged in via sync, then read the privacy policy, logged out, and closed the app. I was crushed because now I couldn’t even use the cool username I signed up with anywhere else either because now the admachines already knew it and probably already attached it to my device ID.
GA collects very limited information by default. You have to go pretty far out of your way to give Google usernames, posts, etc for ad purposes. It’s likely the only thing they received was a device identifier generated specifically for the new install of the app. You’re fine.
You most likely can use the account, unless the author is intentionally doing something shady, Google doesn’t know your username from this interaction.
Google doesn’t know the username of someone logged in? I thought that might be the first piece of data that Google picks up.
I’ve been using DDG for tracking, and Connect had all sorts of weird tracking when I used it. Check it out with some network monitor and make sure it’s not sending back your info.
Thanks for the info. Which ones are open source and don’t track? Liftoff and Jerboa?
LJ was very adamant about not collecting or keeping any user data under the reddit regime. I’m happy giving him the benefit of the doubt here.
The dev has stated that the tracking is disabled if ads are disabled, and other users have confirmed that via duckduckgo.
Hope this works but here’s what ddg is showing me was blocked. Only Google attempted to track and it was only once before I purchased ultra. Basically everything Google already knows about anyone using android.
Removing ads via IAP or the Sync Ultra subscription eliminates that data sharing.
Per the dev, responding to my question in the discord server just now.
Why are the responses to all these questions happening in Discord rather than the official Sync Lemmy channel? 🤔
“Benefit of the doubt” does not mean “blindly trust”…?
Listen you can do what you want if you feel your privacy is being violated, but this particular developer is not scamming anyone. He has an established history of not giving a fuck about your user data, which is backed up by other users verifying that the data tracking ends when ads are removed.
Since it’s admob my guess is it’s Google analytics. Which means everything you look at or touch, but it’s probably as much for the developer so they can see how users are reacting to the app layout and designs.
The developer should move to an open source platform for analytics if this bothers users.
