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.
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.
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.
FWIW that page is a bit deceptive , it’s not saying it’s collecting all of that data. The only info on that page is “146 tracking attempts from Google”, which makes sense if it has Google ads.
Holy hell. I’m glad I’m using DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. Shout out to NextDNS and RethinkDNS!
Can you explain more? Would DNS level blocking stop ads on a smart TV (for YouTube specifically) as well?
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.
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.
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.
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/coreprotectYeah, pretty much all Minecraft servers rely on donations to stay up and most of the ones that have an active player-base are able to stay up for years. Granted, many servers give certain perks to donors, but those perks are entirely cosmetic in many instances. Maybe what Lemmy needs is to add donor tags so that donors get a little bit of pizzazz on their names.
The reddit gold model didn’t work. Reddit was a VC funded start up though, so if was expected to make a lot more than just enough to keep the servers going.
I’d bet lemmy instances can get by on donations and reddit style awards. Like you say, it can be incentivized further with cosmetic rewards.
I don’t really think gilding works with federation. Another issue is that cosmetics would need to be implemented by the majority of 3rd party apps. I take back what I said before, I’m not sure what a good way to fund instances would be.
That’s a good point. The federation part makes it trickier.
I would one time pay for this, but a subscription feels meh.
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.
Too soon, being taken advantage of?
The developer has a track record, we already know the product being delivered and the terms.
The fan base are the people who were already using Sync for Reddit.
The people who like me had used Sync for Reddit since 2017. Sync always had ads and the inherent tracking, I paid 2.69€ in Jan 2017 to remove ads and support the development.
(When In 2022 the developer added another support level where you had access to early betas, I paid again 4.99€, because I’m an early adopter and wanted to support again because I never went the subscription route)
I have also setup a monthly donation towards my Lemmy instance.
It might feel too soon because Ljdawson moves fast.
Funding from donations only gets you so far.
Then maybe that’s as far as we should go?
Wikipedia makes it work.
You’d be surprised to hear that wikipedia’s main income is from their major benefactors like amazon, google, and other organizations. Donations from individual people make up a small portion of their income.
https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/annualreport/2020-annual-report/donors/#section-2
People have been saying some variant of “the fediverse won’t work at scale if it stays free and without ads” for a decade now. And yet it keeps growing despite remaining free and without ads.
lemmy.world has frequent outages that last most of the day. It wouldn’t say its exactly smooth sailing
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’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?
Jerboa seems clean so far! Haven’t tried Liftoff much as I didn’t like the UI.
