I was looking forward to trying Sync today now that it’s live, but my enthusiasm was immediately dampened after seeing the “Data Safety” section on the Google Play store.
Liftoff has been great, and want to say thanks for making an awesome app. This will continue to be my daily driver.
Edit: for clarity, because the post got way bigger than I expected.
Sync looks like a fantastic app, and the dev/s should charge whatever they feel is fair for their efforts, even if that’s through the usual ads + ad tracking.
My intent was just to post here in /c/Liftoff to thank the Liftoff devs for managing to somehow offer an awesome app without any of that.
It’s a bit weird. I installed Sync yesterday but I don’t get any ads. I don’t have a system wide ad blocker or anything. Note that I don’t have GApps.
Yeah, one glance at the terms of use had me uninstalling the app. I don’t feel like “decentralized social media” and “sale of personal data” pair well together.
It’s like people are trying to misinterpret.
Liftoff is strictly using Lemmy’s free API and for the developer 5 users or 5M users doesn’t make a difference to his expenses.
The Sync developer is obviously trying to do something more ambitious.
It’s great that we have FOSS apps that do a decent job but we shouldn’t look down on developers who put a lot of time, effort, and money into something expecting to make a return on their investment.
I don’t like data collecting either but I accept that if you want to offer a free version - it’s inevitable. What I hate is when you’re not able to pay for ads to go away.
But I might be biased as I’m a developer myself and would hate to put 8-9 weeks of hard work into delivering a great app and then get hate for wanting to get something in return for that work.
The Sync developer is obviously trying to do something more ambitious.
Hm, what exactly? It doesn’t seem to have any particularly remarkable features 🤨
Sounds like you didn’t actually try the app. It’s super fast and smooth. Lots of customization, great UI. I happily pay for that effort.
Sync will surely make the lemmy ecosystem more attractive and bring in a ton more people, which is a great thing for everyone here whether you use the app or not.
Tons of more options and a faster and smoother interface. And moving subscriptions across instances is coming. And it has cloud sync.
But I agree, it’s quite pricy for the extra bells and whistles.
