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this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
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Privacy
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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.
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Look, I get where you're coming from, but there's a difference between a $965B corporation whose sole purpose is to harvest your personal info for ads, and a solo dev who just wants to make their (and your) Lemmy browsing a bit less painful. They're putting in a hellofa lot of time and effort into this thing, which means a hellofa lot of time not spent making money at a regular job. I'm more than happy to kick a few bucks here and there to keep something like that afloat, especially given how apps like Boost and Sync make me actually want to spend time on Lemmy. Encouraging fediverse adoption is a win for the whole ecosystem. You don't have to use Boost, and if you do choose to install it, you don't have to pay. There's an inexpensive ad-free version alongside the ad-supported one for exactly that reason. But complaining about Boost because you hate "social media apps" is like yelling "Fuck Nestle" at the 12-year-old selling lemonade from their driveway. Different scale, different purpose.
It's fine to not pay, but I'm glad that some people do support indie devs when they can. The world would be a lot bleaker without little passion projects like this dotting the landscape and filling in the gaps to help bigger projects like Lemmy take off.
Probably a hot take but paying to remove ads vs paying for a little passion project aren't the same things. Especially when it comes to privacy and how much of the data collection is still running but not serving you ads.
Good point, and we should probably tease apart that distinction between funding models and project intent/scope. For me, I've always seen apps like Boost, Sync, Infinity, and Jerboa as being "indie passion projects" regardless of how they pay their devs because of things like the project's scope, the dev team size, and their community involvement. They just don't strike me as the kind of apps you build for their "explosive growth and profit potential," you know? So by extension, I've got to assume anyone who builds one is doing it because they love lemmy, wish it was better, and happen to have a little coding knowledge to do something about it. That's a mission I can get behind.
Funding, on the other hand, is something that everyone needs but no one has actually figured out. So as long as it looks like a dev is experimenting with their options in good faith and honestly engaging with the community to figure out what's best, I can't really fault them for going with one model over another. I've got my own preference for open-source community-funded projects of course, but I'm not going to begrudge a dev for seeing it differently.
With Boost, there's an ad-free and privacy-respecting option, and then there's an Admob version. Those are the two most common funding methods out there, and I'm not surprised in the slightest by any dev who reaches for them as off-the-shelf answers. Lemmy has an open-source vibe, sure, but Boost started as a reddit app. Go with what you know. I might be wrong, but it doesn't feel like the ad supported one is being built to harvest data - it's just a drop-in advertising space like websites have used since the beginning of time. And if I'm really that concerned about it, I can pay for ad-free. Do I wish that it was open-source, patreon supported, and community built? Sure. But this ticks enough of my boxes to say "sure, why not," and then casually watch how the conversation about funding plays out in the comments. Who knows, maybe the dev will open things up or add a donation-ware version based on feedback, and I can upvote the Lemmings who suggest it.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that the project feels genuine and in a spirit that I can support. The foundation is solid. Everything else is just details, and I'll happily tag along for the ride as the developer, the community, and Lemmy as a platform figure out what that means.
I'm all for funding the people who put all the work into these projects, just so we're clear. But Youtube Premium for example, you spend money to remove ads but google is still tracking you and will still invade your privacy despite you paying them.
I didn't know boost offers different versions for people, it's not something I use, and I'm glad that people are willing to fund the team that keeps it going.