Privacy

31975 readers

615 users here now

A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

Some Rules

Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
Don't promote proprietary software
Try to keep things on topic
If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
Be nice :)

Related communities

Chat rooms

[Matrix/Element]Dead
Discord

much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

493

The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

245 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 249 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (17 children)

Boost dev here. There should be an Ad icon on the top right to report the ad. Not sure why it is not showing in this case. I will try to block those ads in the AdMob console. Edit: Done

[+] [email protected] -9 points 10 months ago (10 children)

I'm not a boost user, but why does boost have ads exactly? Why don't you just ask users to buy a license a la grayjay? Make it 0.99 or less. This has a few advantages:

You'll make more per user than you ever will with ads
Users won't be tracked endlessly
It's good PR for the app

Also quick question, where is the source code for Boost? I can't seem to find it

[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago (7 children)

I don't think Boost is open source, and you can pay a one time fee to permanently remove the ads

[+] [email protected] -67 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I don’t think Boost is open source

oh, so that's why it has ads, they don't care about their users... alright... I'm not interested in this conversation anymore

[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (1 children)

This is a bad mindset. Even though FOSS software is a good thing, but there is nothing wrong to make money from their hard work, you cannot and should not force developers to work for free if they don't want to.

If you want free software then there are FOSS alternative options out there and nobody forces you to use Boost.

[+] [email protected] -11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

there is nothing wrong to make money from their hard work

I assume you didn't read my parent comment or perhaps you extrapolated on my beliefs without asking. I even proposed a direct way to ask users to pay.

you cannot and should not force developers to work for free if they don’t want to.

My word, of course not! Where did you get the impression that I want that from? I would NEVER propose something like that, as it stands against everything I believe in; in fact if you read through my history on lemmy I am certain that you're gonna find plenty of proof of that.

I stand by the original meaning of the word when I say FOSS. It does NOT mean gratis; the misuse of the term FOSS as gratis is my biggest pet peeve. I don't care how much you charge for your software, if I like the software I will pay for it, exactly how much you're asking, without a problem.

The F in FOSS stands for Freedom, not price. I have paid for most FOSS software I use on a regular basis and I'm a HUGE proponent of paid FOSS and I have, multiple times, asked FOSS developers that release gratis software to PLEASE open up donations; I do this constantly and I think I may even have done it here on lemmy once or twice.

If you want free software then there are FOSS options out there and nobody forces you to use Boost.

Indeed. My preferred client at the moment is the web ui on desktop and jerboa on mobile. Those are FOSS and developed by the developers of lemmy themselves (to whom I HAVE donated to). But I was thinking about switching client, which is why I asked for the code for Boost to see if it's software I would be willing to run on my device (and pay for!).

In fact I will even go as far as to say that it is your RESPONSIBILITY as a user of FOSS applications to donate if you can.

To me if software is not FOSS it signals one thing: they are doing something they don't want me to know about, sometimes this is acceptable (tho never preferred), but that's the exception, not the rule.

Being able to decide what software runs on your machine should never be a point of contention. Non FOSS software is always a trade off, and for most things (including lemmy clients), it's not one I'm willing to make, nor should you!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

HOW FUCKING DARE THEY NOT WORK FOR FREE, FLAIL THEM NOW

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Other people do it. They also just work for donations.

On a side note, I recommend sideloading Blokada 5 to permanently block all ads in apps.

You can download it from their website: https://blokada.org/#download (pick blokada 5)

You have to sideload it because Google banned it from their store for being too effective.