I would pay extra to not have to hear people complain about a choice no one is forcing them to make
Do what works for you, and let other people do the same
Block this subreddit for a while I guess, check in after a month.
this subreddit
TRIGGERED
It would be a lot better if it was a true donation, since Lemmy itself doesn’t have ads. The developer also has very minimal fees to cover, so it makes no sense to add ads ontop of a free service and have a steep price to remove it (yes, 20+ dollars for an app toconly remove ads is steep, look around at other app prices). This was not the case for Sync on Reddit, it was a lot cheaper.
It just seems unnecessarily greedy by the developer
Hey, man’s gotta eat. And there’s many roads to Rome if you really don’t want to pay the developer to remove the ads.
It’s more expensive than the upgrade was for Reddit, but it’s a smaller market and you pay more for a niche product. I don’t have a problem with him getting paid for a good product.
I would like to point out that @[email protected] has been very forward to the LW team and he has our full support. And while Lemmy itself doesn’t have ads and Lemmy World is running on donations and volunteers that doesn’t mean that every developer should be forced to do charity-work. This is his full-time job and he provided plenty of choices for those who don’t want to pay or who don’t want to pay the full price for Ultra. If that’s not enough, nobody is forcing you to do anything.
people seem to forget that the dev wants to work FULL TIME on the app, you are paying for having great updates quick bug fixes etc.
That was the case for sync for reddit too.
It doesn’t feels like a choice in the modern world. It is either awful experience with shit ads or normal experience with paying. Is it that hard to understand people?
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.
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.
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.
Summit.
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).
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.
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).
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.
doing so will result in losing the remaining 30%
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.
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.
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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.
Just saying…
I get that there’s inflation and all… but there are no Imgur API fees to deal with like there were with Reddit (images upload right to the Lemmy instance).
Posted from Connect for Reddit…
And that included a few features that are now ultra only like tagging users. (and maybe more, that was the one I used and noticed is missing from pro now)
Has nothing to do with inflation but economies of scale, his userbase here will be a fraction of the reddit one.
And this is exactly why I bought the app without thinking. I paid $1.99 for Reddit Sync in 2012 and have been using it since then. I consider buying the new app payment for all the value I’ve gotten out of the app and the developers work over the past 11 years.
This post lead to me to send 20 USD to the Jerboa/Lemmy devs.
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.
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.
80% of the app is the same. It’s not like he spent years creating a new app from scratch. I’m not saying he doesn’t deserve compensation but I feel like he’s being a bit gougey in this situation.
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
@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
Here’s hoping it all shakes out in the end.
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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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Greed.
I signed up for a year of Ultra yesterday, more as a show of support. I’m already regretting it after seeing how many tiers of pricing are now being shoved out.
I get the dev has to eat, but this is completely going against everything Lemmy is supposed to be about, while costing significantly more than its Reddit counterpart.
While not necessary, it would have been nice if there was a small discount for Ultra subscribers of Sync for Reddit. I got just over 1 year of usage out of my ‘lifetime’ purchase. A gesture, even a small one, would have been nice.
I’ve just been soured over this whole thing, tbh.
I added the new price tiers based on user feedback on here after launching.
I appreciate that, but your pricing is still still disproportionately high, especially when compared to the number of fantastic free alternatives out there.
I love your app, and I’ve supported you as a Pro and Ultra member on Sync for Reddit as well, but I really think you should reconsider the current subscription pricing and lifetime purchases for Ultra options. As far as I’m aware, Sync is also one of the only major Lemmy apps that has introduced ads/pay to remove ads option. You’ve brought subscriptions and money into a platform that is now home to an exodus of users that hated how those things were slowly destroying Reddit. It just doesn’t sit right with me.
I’ve signed up for a year out of a show as support for you. The best thing you could do is show your long-term support for this platform by encouraging growth and fair options for users rather than creating multi-tiered pay walls with questionably high prices.
If lemmy is just for Foss crusaders it has no future
There’s a huge difference between wanting something for free and wanting something fairly priced.
Well as far as I am aware, not much if any of the ad and pricing policies have changed from Sync for Reddit, so it does not make much sense to be all the sudden surprised that Sync for Lemmy continues to be ad-supported. Sync for Lemmy is basically just a faithful port of Sync for Reddit with as few changes as necessary, which AFAIK is exactly what everyone asked for.
ad and pricing policies have changed from Sync for Reddit
The ad-free version of Sync for Reddit (Pro) was around £2 to £5, depending on when you bought it.
There was also a fairly priced lifetime cost for Ultra (around £25). The pricing policy you’re referring to is vastly different from what’s on offer right now. I’m not sure how you’re managing to even compare them.
I put in for a yearly ultra subscription and I’d do it again. Not everybody here is a FOSS crusader or hanging around on /c/piracy. Some of us are just Reddit refugees that want our Sync back because it was awesome.
Hell, just add a built in pirate mode for these people that removes ads for free. I bet most of us would gladly pay anyway, and it will hopefully put an end to all the sobbing
I paid for ad removal, considering lifetime ultra but this price is very steep. I have no idea if Lemmy is even around a few years from now. Could you confirm or deny that this price for ultra is here to stay?
Also, would it be possible to get a discount on ultra lifetime later if you already bought ad removal?
It’s more like blackmail tbh. “Pay or i’ll track the shit out of you and sell the data to advertisers”. I can see why people are put off, and I am also. And what’s the guarantee if we pay that the data isn’t collected and sold anyway?
That’s totally reasonable from the point of view of a developer who has to earn something to live. I mean you still have the choice to not use it. The internet simply works through user tracking and advertising
I’ve seen a lot of websites do the same thing. Either allow cookies or pay
Gawd, tinfoil hats are in right now!
How’s it tinfoil hat? It’s very clear how much tracking is going on if you don’t subscribe. None of this stuff is made up.
I think he meant your last part. You say there is a chance that LJ will collect and sell data, although you paid for premium. That’s a unnecessary accusation.
Then don’t use it if that bothers you. It’s not blackmail lol
You can stop using that for free, you can continue using it for free with ads, you can subscribe and use it without ads, you can buy lifetime access and use it without ads
So many options
Plenty of options for people with plenty of money.
There’s a difference between “There’s a lot tracking happening if you don’t pay!” and “What’s the guarantee you don’t track us if we pay?” and that difference comes in the form of a hat… Made of tinfoil…
Why are you getting mad? The economy of scale is simply not there yet because there is only a handful of us lemmy users right now. With 100,000 active monthly users, even if 1% of them bought a subscription at $17/year, it’ll still going to net the dev ~$12,000 per year (after 30% google play fee) which is actually below US minimum wage. As lemmy got more and more users, I’m sure the dev would revise the pricing. If he were greedy he would just quit and work at some big corp instead of working full time on a lemmy client for peanuts.
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?
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.
AUD $33.99. No thanks.
There’s no ads in Lemmy.
There’s no ads, yet.
I feel like ads in lemmy would be a hard to implement thing, it would need to be done on the instance level… and people would just jump ship to another instance that didn’t have ads. it’s possible that it could post ads as posts that get federated but it sounds like an amazing way to potentially get your instance defederated in concern that it’s going to devolve to constant spam.
I mean, right now, yeah. But these instances use resources, which means they’re not free. Someone needs to cover the bill. I remember when YouTubers were put on blast when they started running ads and now it’s normal.
Or there might be instances that are specific paid and that’s known. Like an OnlyLemmy or something.
Use Liftoff
…or Thunder, which is very similar to Liftoff. I use them pretty much interchangeably. Both are built with Flutter, have similar UX and performance and they work on both Android and iOS.
bit late but, liftoff doesn’t feel the same like sync, sync looks and feels like a native android app
So. Much. Better. I just don’t get the Sync mania.
Liftoff is buggy as hell and has terrible performance and UX, as does basically every other Lemmy client
And I don’t understand how people say the other apps are better, especially Voyager. I’ve used them all and they’re all a fraction of the quality of Sync.
Well… enjoy your ads, then.
I have no ads
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.
Okay, I won’t push you from Sync. But if you have this sort of money, please consider supporting Lemmy directly or indirectly (Mozilla, among other things, funded the effort to find and patch TootRoot before it became a problem).
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
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.
AdGuard does the same. All I see is “sponsored content” and keep scrolling.
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.
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.
Used DNS adguar before , now I use proton VPN which has it built in with netshield
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 RethinkDNS
Honestly I think we all need to relax. Lemmy is a niche app that’s rising, and it’s one guy. I paid for ultra since it was cheaper than the pay for no ads option.
$29AUD or whatever it was per year for ultra is literally paying a dev once a year for their work, and to keep it updated and build features.
The outrage is really ridiculous considering how quickly the app was built, how decent the experience is and the realities of the real world right now.
Pay the cash, you’re not going to remember it by the time you’re paid next. For the job you did, producing something. Like this guy did.
Yeah, I’m in the US, and yesterday it was showing $12.99 for me, and currently it is now $19.99. I guess the dev is still trying to work out the prices.
The irony is, the price is going up instead of going down. How
isin the world he based his decision on pricing.I don’t have any skin in the game, as I don’t use the app nor any other, but the userbase for the Fediverse is like a hundred times smaller than Reddit at least. The same work on Reddit that could earn $200 is only going to earn $2 here.
Inflation
