Simple solution. Get DNS66 from the F-droid site (not the Play Store version that wants a subscription). That takes care of the ads in all my apps. It inserts itself like a VPN, filtering all Internet traffic, blocking the ad servers.
Personally I’m more for using a custom DNS server to block ads.
I was using Blokada 5, but found that it used a bit too much of my battery.
Now I just set my DNS to dns.adblock.com, and it gives me the same result.
Mullvad VPN also includes the ability to block all ads at the DNS level, so if you don’t already have a VPN (or if you’re not happy with your current one), I highly recommend it. Great VPN, great speed, great company.
Mozilla VPN uses Mullvad’s servers so it offers pretty much the same QoS but some of it goes to a non-profit that develops and supports Firefox, funds white hats finding and patching bugs in the Fediverse. and fights for an open web.
(It also features DNS-level ad blocking.)
or NextDNS or Adguard
Used DNS adguar before , now I use proton VPN which has it built in with netshield
Yup. Maybe the author still makes money from them even if they are blocked by our dns servers. Hope so, would be a win win.
Nope he gets nothing. If the ad fails to load then there is no money to be gained by the developer.
Would be nice if it was possible to load the ad but not view it, getting the best of all worlds.
Or RethinkDNS
I got it for 15. Is it expensive for ad removal? Yes. Is it too expensive? No, for me personally no. I wanted to support the dev and I did it. Also It’s the only app I am going to use until Lemmy is no more.
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15 euros is not “this sort of money”. But I did donate to Mozilla! :) And I am planning to donate to my instance owner as well.
You paid $15 for ad removal, when the dev himself is the one putting in the ads 💩 lemmy doesn’t have ads, sync does.
You played yourself.
I know Lemmy does not put ads duh.
That’s how ad removal for literally every app in existence works. The ads aren’t some kind of natural disaster that I’m paying the developer to “fight” lmao
Imho 15 eur is actually a fair price. In my country you can get a McDonald’s meal for that price that satisfies me once whereas Sync satisfies me everyday 😄. And 25 still seems okay to me for a nice app like this. I can imagine a lot of effort is put in this app. But everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
I used to use sync pro for Reddit. I now have connect and sync for Lemmy installed. Connect seems better in every way? What features is it missing?
Just try sync for some time and you’ll notice a huge difference.
fr, the performance, look, features, customization of Sync for reddit were out of this world, I am sure this will continue for sync for lemmy too
I was using connect before I moved to sync (I had used it forever on Reddit) and connect is so much more janky while scrolling or viewing/dismissing images. Sync is smooth and feels way more polished.
One thing I’ve not seen any other Reddit* or Lemmy app do that Sync does, is preserve the “position” of comments. If you enter a thread, scroll down half way, then go back, enter a different thread, leave that one, and come back to the previous thread - you’ll still be at the same spot.
This is nice for me when I accidentally swipe the wrong way and end up on the previous page, or something happens to catch my mind just as I’m going back a page.
Specifically, I like a lot of things about Connect but I’ve found that there’s no decent separation between different comments/posts. Aside from Sync though, I really like Summit.
*Apollo somewhat did this, IIRC you had to use the swipe forward gesture in order to return to the previous position. But if you loaded another thread (or even just did a regular click of the same thread), that didn’t work. I also haven’t been on iOS for a while now so I could be out of date on that.
I’ve been using a forked version of Infinity for Reddit. The comment position is the number one thing I’ve been missing with it.
It was so nice to just swipe out of the comments to look at the original post again.
Customization and polish, for one.
It should be in the profile menu on the top left. Perhaps LJ is rolling it out selectively.
I bought it last night and it was half the price in OP’s screenshot. Either it has gone up, or again perhaps there is some A/B testing going on at different price points.
i don’t think it is selective just update the app regularly
The price seems to vary quite a bit depending on the location. Probably something on google play’s end?
As much fun as Sync is (and while I appreciate creators want to get paid)…
We’re talking like $15-30(!). That’s steep for a phone app. All this money stuff is pushing me back to Connect and Jerboa.
I wish Sync well. But I think I’m done with it already.
While liftoff was the only third party I liked, I still think it was pretty unimpressive. It ran ok and that’s about it. Features were lacking, aesthetics are bad, some glitches. For me the $20 or whatever it is for sync is worth it. I’ve used reddit since 2012 and browsed exclusively on my phone, swapping between relay and sync. If you average that cost out, even considering the $5 or whatever it was to get rid of ads on Reddit, it’s basically nothing. The usage tracking is pretty shitty though.
EDIT: Ok I just saw the lifetime price for ultra, damn wtf lol. Again, averaging that cost over the ten years I’ve used the app means it’s still a good deal but fuck upfront that’s a lot lmao
It really should’ve been $50 for Lifetime, at most.
They are okay and did the job until Sync came out. But are no way near as polished as Sync, which has years of updates and development.
I’ll just wait, they are usable enough. If you want the Lemmy experience to improve, donate $5 or $20 for Lemmy (in-browser) UI development, which is still default for most devices and it very much sucks. (Part of it is lack of support for anything like cross-domain cookies in browser technology that would store what your home instance is so that you would be always redirected to browse from home but even without it there are problems.)
I like Sync so no thank you
Okay, I won’t push you from Sync. But if you have the money to remove its ads, please also consider supporting Lemmy directly or indirectly (Mozilla, among other things, funded the effort to find and patch TootRoot before it became a problem). If you don’t want to just donate, switching to Mozilla VPN will also help.
Yeah I’ve been using a lot of the available apps and while I had my favorites (Summit and Liftoff) there has always been little quirks that I’ve just been dealing with. The moment Sync hit my device it’s like I’m back to my reddit experience for the last decade. I’ll still keep an eye on the other apps, because I very much prefer and try to support open source developers. But I just can’t force a subpar experience on myself.
The Summit dev has been extremely responsive and has added in a few features I requested on a quick turnaround. They also happen to be out of town on a work trip this week so the timing probably sucks for them. And as I’m typing this I’m remembering that ones not even open source 🤦♂️.
It’s not open source, but it’s also not spyware or adware.
Summit.
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Not the person you replied to but I don’t evaluate app prices in a vacuum. First I think of what paying actually gets me (e.g. no ads), then I consider how it compares to alternatives both free and paid. A paid app has to provide some value over a free app and an expensive app has to provide some value over cheaper apps. Furthermore if an app is priced such that I can buy 3-4 other apps while also being more expensive than any individual apps I’ve previously purchased then it gives me some pause.
Ditto. I used to be a big Sync fan and used it for years as my primary mobile client for Reddit until 8-10 months or so ago when the dev did a ‘fuck off and be unable to be contacted while something in the app breaks’ break, which led to a bunch of ads appearing despite paying for no ads (and according to people on the subreddit at the time it was not a one time occurrence lol). I switched that day to Boost and didn’t go back, but I was looking forward to trying out Sync for Lemmy when it released.
All the privacy and pricing concerns the last 24 hours have brought forth does not make me wanna even touch the app lol. I’m not paying that much money to fucking browse a glorified forum on my phone (specially when there’s many other options).
I think that asking to be paid for your work is totally fine (albeit I myself made my lemmy app completely free and opensource, simply because its just my hobby project), but its a rather different story when you provide app for open source, nonprofit venture-free platform and start to inject ads and trackers into it. Its goes against the entire idea of free decentralised platform and makes it closer to profit-focused app like reddit/threads/etc imo
Voyager is fantastic IMO. wefwef.app , it is a web app, it will even put am icon for itself on your phone so it feels just like a regular app. Works really great, and is really fast.
Voyager is also available at m.lemmy.world since I see you are using lemmy.world
What do you mean? Is there a distinction between lemmy.world and m.lemmy.world?
m.lemmy.world host a voyager instance preconfigured to load posts from lemmy.world.
Interesting, I had no idea, thanks!
It’s also available in the Android Play Store and will be on the iOS App Store soon.
I agree. While $20 could still be seen as reasonable - even though making it one of the more expensive apps, thigh I’m willing to go for it if Sync continues development -, the asking price of $100 for the lifetime ultra is insane. I’m not aware of any other app that is this expensive. Of course, you could argue there’s subscription apps out there that don’t even have a lifetime model - e.g. Adobe, Microsoft Office -, But these provide considerably more value as well and are huge corporations.
My feeling is - and I don’t have facts to prove it - that the developers of the large reddit apps (esp. Apollo) simply became used to the money making machine and want to squeeze as much as possible out of it.
While in the end it is entirely up to them, as there’s open source and free alternatives out there, I’m not too fond of this behavior.
Yes.
There are a lot of other apps for Lemmy. Some are not as polished as Sync – but some are. And none (that I know of, on Android) are ad supported. Most are open source and 100% free.
This is a money grab. People were so excited for Sync that they don’t want to call it a money grab. But that’s what it is.
🙄 it’s a small dev, who got shut out of the previous customer base they’d built up, and now has to rebuild with fewer customers (and fewer potential customers at least short term).
If your job lost 70% of its customers, I bet you’d be begging your boss to raise prices to avoid a 70% pay cut.
It’s not a money grab. It drives me crazy how much stuff people say is a “money grab”, “theft”, “a scam”, “predatory”, etc. Asking for money isn’t malicious, neither is asking for more money than you personally think is reasonable/makes sense for your finances, and neither is offering a freemium ad supported app (which is better than nothing if you’re not willing to pay with money).
Edit: and sorry if that sounds overly aggressive, but you definitely struck a nerve/peeve as of late. It just seems like everyone wants to be as dramatic as possible lately.
That’s a farce; it happens all the time, revenue stops increasing from growing the customer base, so the prices are raised on the existing customer base to cover costs and keep things operational. Why do you think Netflix still isn’t $8.99, and password sharing is no longer permitted?
If you definitely know you can’t make enough money on 30% of 1,000,000 people, but you can make enough money charging 10% of 1,000,000 people a higher rate, you’re going to do that … because it’s your only option. There are diminishing returns to picking up new customers with lower prices.
I see your point. And you don’t deserve to be down voted, as it’s reasonable.
I do think he’s pricing it a bit steep for what the market can bear. Maybe not. I hope he gets as much as possible. I just know that I am priced out and will continue to use Connect.
I’m sorry to hear that you’re priced out, and I think it’s fine to give pricing feedback like that. I just am sick of everything being “outrage” where someone “dares” to try to make some money in exchange for their effort.
I both wish you a better financial situation and that a shorter term compromise arrives where you can afford the app, or that you continue to be satisfied with Connect. One of the beauties of the fediverse is that it’s not an all or nothing thing, there are other clients and other ways to support folks and the community (even just being a friendly person, so props there).
Given how much time I spent on Sync with Reddit, I imagine the ultra one-time price ($99) will end up being a dollar per hour in a few months and just go down from there.
A dollar per hour for entertainment is generally a good deal to me.
This post lead to me to send 20 USD to the Jerboa/Lemmy devs.
Based
I hope the dev donates a fair share…
“Adding” ads to a FOSS service is pretty sinister especially if it only cost $3.99/year to remove them from the Sync for Reddit app.
Lemmy could use some white hat bug hunters to find security vulnerabilities before malicious actors do, like Mozilla helping patch Mastodon’s TootRoot.
No one is adding ads to Lemmy. Sync only puts ads in itself. It’s pedantic but it’s important to get it right.
Reddit had considerably more users when Sync was created- so smaller amount per person over larger user base would pay for the bill.
With Lemmy, user base isn’t there yet to create that same economies of scale - so to pay for the dev’s time - each person would need to pay a larger amount.
You can’t compare Reddit and Lemmy. They are different with a different model. Lemmy rely on donation. Reddit has ads and investors.
The dev of Sync did money with Reddit but Reddit had a source of revenue.
Lemmy relying on donation doesn’t have this source of revenue. This is why splitting the revenue of Sync between Lemmy’s devs, instances and Sync’s dev is fair.
If someone donate to the Lemmy’s devs and/or instances, this person allows the sync’s dev to make money on this donation. This isn’t fair.
The sync model with Lemmy is predatory at best and parasitic at least.
@1ird @chargingtriceratops Regional pricing hasn’t been set up yet, but he plans to make a single time purchase option in the future, and set up Regional pricing
I mean that’s literally how business works - amount needed to be profitable / number of customers = base price.
Reddit had millions of users, lower price per person.
Not to mention the literally free version!
I’m pretty sure he had to rewrite all of the code related to network and the API, and that’s not little work. Thats weeks worth of work including testing
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Have you considered people are mad because:
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Same purchase was a lot cheaper when it was Reddit.
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Reddit already ran ads, so having an app who ran ads of its own was fine.
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Monoteizing a FOSS project in a way that doesn’t help the maintainers of that project may not be seen as ethical.
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Having a subscription for features that don’t cost anything to serve (highlighting users can be done locally for instance) might feel like an artificial limitation to drive sales.
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The fact that it launched with both a transaction (not a small one, as it costs more than any non-professional app I bought) and a subscription service in literally the first beta of the app.
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Combination of these with all the alternatives being all-free (both in price and as in freedom) might make people think few times before paying for this app.
Personally, I really dislike the price, find subscription meh but I absolutely adore Sync’s UX. But honestly, without few things changing, I don’t see myself recommending Sync to friends.
My thoughts about your first few points:
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I, and many others it seems, think the Sync for Reddit app was priced almost too low. Only a few dollars for an app isn’t sustainable for the dev in the long run. I believe people using reddit sync with ads actually supported the dev more than people buying the app.
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The reddit API was free, so it technically didn’t have ads if you used some ad-free (FOSS) 3rd party app. Sync for lemmy isn’t any different in that sense.
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Sure, the lemmy devs and instances also need money to run the service. People are free to and should donate to them as well. Sync for lemmy, however, isn’t costing instances any more than FOSS apps.
The rest of your points are just personal preference, really. If you like the app, buy it or use it with ads. If you don’t like the app, use something else. Honestly surprised by how much hate an app no one is forcing people to use is getting.
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Well said and reasoned. The vitriol above however, not so much. [Edit] Spelling.
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Happy to hear that, these devs need to eat too right
They need to earn more than the dev of sync who don’t split the revenue with the Lemmy dev and the instances. The split of the revenues is fair for everyone. Lemmy devs, instances and Sync dev receive something for their work.
He is literally making money on the back of the people donating. Without these donator his business doesn’t make any sense and wouldn’t exist.
I am pretty sure some of his revenue goes to lemmy and instances because it isn’t a full free app
It’s been $33.99 AUD since it was released.
Typical for Australia though tbh, getting the shit end of the deal
Strictly speaking, everyone is getting the shit end of the deal. Reddit Sync was 4 quid, one off payment.
$37.99 NZD here
Between the ads, pricing and tracking I’m just going to stick to Liftoff, it works really well.
Liftoff is good but I’m trying Infinity right now and it’s even better imo.
me too, infinity is free, open source, very good looking, customizable, fits android and is fast, very fast(infinity for lemmy has some bugs but it just released)
Finally back on Infinite, finally back home
Infinity Gang Rise Up
The price is very reasonable if you realize the economy of scale is not there yet. There is only about 100,000 monthly active Lemmy users right now. Even if 1% of those users bought the app at $20, the dev only net ~$14,000 for working on his app full time. The calculus will surely different if Lemmy have 10x more active users which will allow the dev to lower the app pricing while still sustaining himself.
So you’re basically saying wait until the lemmy user base grows and see if the dev drops the price. That would lead to a lot of the OG buyers getting angry.
They shouldn’t get mad if what they say about gladly supporting the sync developer is true. I meant, isn’t it weird to get mad when something you bought actually got lower price a few years in the future? Like buying a game for $60 at launch and then some patient gamers bought them for $10 a few years later. Why angry at that?
I can confirm the price with a bit of variation 21.99€ for me.
€18.99 here in Belgium. I would think it is adjusted now with local VAT percentages.
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It’s getting ridiculous everyday
Lemmy has a smaller audience, so it makes sense to charge more. And everything is getting more expensive these days anyway.
Reddit has a lot more users. Plus lemmy isn’t as stable a user base as Reddit.
I’m soso happy to pay $2/mo for Ultra, very cheap for what it gives me. Miles better than any other app, keep it up!
It baffles me the amount of pushback the $2 a month is getting. I guess it says alot about the demographic browsing Lemmy…I’m happy to support the dev. For the amount of time I’ve used on sync it’s 100% worth every penny.
You must be new if you’re surprised lemmy is mostly privacy and security conscious folk who prefer foss.
It does mean unwilling to pay for closed source software.
They say behind a VPN.
Yeah, I trust the business model where their reputation depends on keeping my data private an order of magnitudes more than the business model that is literally selling it.
If that’s your mentality it shouldn’t matter whether the software is paid or free as in beer. I’m generally in that group, but I’m pretty pragmatic about using some closed source software when it’s non-critical to my life…
A Lemmy app where tons of alternative clients exist and everyone I’m doing is more or less public anyways… Yeah that doesn’t need to be free software.
You keep missing the point, I’m done with it.
I can’t post or search on the app yet… It’s objectively the worst Lemmy app currently. I loved Sync for Reddit, but charging more for a product missing basic features is questionable.
Lol none of what you said is true.
You’re talking stupid for no reason
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/umBW0Saa_WY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
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Is this a bot or something spamming the same message to anyone? Either way you’re being pushy, stop it. I’m going to block you.
Sorry, duplicates removed
Thank! I’ll be sure to donate some here as well.
It’s not miles better than either infinity or voyager.
For the amount of hours a week I spent in Sync for Reddit and the price I paid then for removing ads, I feel that 20 euros is cheap to remove ads in Sync for Lemmy and would have paid more.
However I understand the price might feel steep up front for new users. An initial trial without ads for a short while might be a solution, where users only start to see ads after using it for a bit so they can test run the app without being disturbed by ads.
it really depends on what you value
Yeah, if Relay showed up with an app for KBin and wanted $30, I’d give it in a heartbeat, but being a long time user, I’d also feel like it’s partially back pay for using it for years after only paying like $4
As it is, I’m really looking forward to Artemis launching and will probably do an equal donation of at least that much to its dev and to Ernest (/KBin social admin and /KBin dev).
The /KBin PWA isn’t bad for what it is, but god damn do I miss using a proper app. At least y’all on Lemmy have options!
