I think now is a great time to remind everyone, like sync’s developer, Lemmy’s developers need to be paid too! The amount of time all the devs put into making lemmy exist, in my opinion, should be worth some of your money. If you can afford it, donating to the people who develop lemmy and/or the people keeping your home instance up will accelerate the incredible growth of lemmy!
Yeah, I do wish there was some form of regional pricing going on. Doesn’t seem to be the case if the prices I’m seeing in my (also third world) country are anything to go by.
And that’s totally fine. That’s the beauty of the internet, not everybody has to pitch in, and if you can’t you shouldn’t feel bad about it. There was a time when I was a starving college student and was doing the five finger discount on a very regular basis. We’re glad you’re here regardless.
Like every open source projects, you can donate with money or your time. Both are equally valuable. Promoting the project, helping new users, heck, even being pleasant and help fostering positive environment in the fediverse so new users feel welcomed is actually very valuable (especially given current reputation of fediverse citizens being especially harsh to new users).
I don’t get where this reputation came from? I’ve had more positive interactions on Lemmy in the last month than I had on Reddit in the last 10 years, literally. I feel like this is the internet equivalent of Iceland, everyone must think it is a frozen hellscape, but then you get here and it is actually a really nice place to be.
This is my biggest problem with it. I have no issue with Sync charging. I have an issue with Sync charging and not passing anything on to the developers of Lemmy.
There’s nothing wrong with charging for API access if the price is reasonable. Reddit was intentionally unreasonable to kill off 3rd party traffic. In 2022, the avg reddit user brought in $0.72 USD per year. If they charged just $1/yr, they’d increase their profit!
Hell, I would even dare say, the best way to do it is to have the API be free up to a certain usage, at which point it becomes paid. Then the price scales down as you get even more and more usage.
This allows newcomers to the app space to get their footing, and punishes people trying to automate vote bots while rewarding established devs.
Yes I know, it was just pretty funny that the first comment I saw was about a paid 3rd party app not paying for access, when this was one of reddit’s “official” reasons for the changes.
Exactly, this is something I see people not talk about as much. Charging for API access is not new and actually reasonable. Handling API calls costs money after all. The issue was the intentionally ridiculous price.
Personally, I think the app is absolutely fine without paying for the subscription. I really don’t see too many ads. I get an average of one ad for every two refreshes of the feed when scrolling through, and none of them have been obtrusive. It’s certainly night and day when compared to the ads in the official Reddit app.
Depends on if their business model works. If enough people are paying for premium and using the free version of the app to pay for development, there is no reason for them to increase the amount of ads. In fact, if they do show too many ads, it will likely push a lot of users to alternate apps.
I mean it’s just a port of the Reddit version that was made by the same dev and had been around for over a decade (with constant updates and improvements), I don’t think enshittification is a given.
Well, compared to Reddit getting filled with “ad looking like real post”, and “ad written as a comment”, and “mass downvote everyone except the ad”… it’s really hard to stoop that low.
What is likely to keep Sync in check, are the alternative apps. Reddit got enshittified because it became the single point of failure.
Same. I have a PiHole on my home network and it blocks the ads in Sync. I still see the empty box where the ad would be though. If I am out of the house the only way I can get that ad blocking back is by connecting to my home VPN server.
In my experience, AdGuard has a more useful (free for home use) server that mirrors the pihole service. It’s more customizable, and this bit is probably the key here, and you can have different rules for different devices/network numbers
Is it true that purchases from sync for reddit don’t carry over to sync for lemmy? I don’t know how anyone could possibly justify a lifetime purchase if so.
They literally are making a new app that, sure, has a very similar look and feel but its for a completely different platform. Sure, it probably shares UI code, but I’m sure a lot of the code to pull from reddit had to be scrapped. I think they deserve to be compensated for their effort and giving any one the app just because they paid for a different app woyls not be compensarion for their efforts. They have to get paid so they can live just like you and me.
When you buy something you do not have to think whether the developer deserves it or not, especially for software where producing more copies is free. You decide whether it is worth it for you.
When you donate, you think about whether someone deserves it and who deserves your money most.
It is. The Lemmy instance owners and the devs aren’t even making a dime off the platform.
That said, the decision to pay is still ultimately up to the user. If you feel it’s too pricey, then there’s Liftoff, which is a perfectly fine app in itself. Others are okay with it or even better if regional pricing is launched.
I’m currently running infinity, seems OK… There’s still a handful of features I’d like.
I am definitely not going to run Sync with adverts and I’m not paying the amount they’re asking, neither am I going to go with subscription based.
If sync halved their ad free version, I’d probably pull the trigger - failing that, I’ll eventually just hack up their client and remove the ads myself.
Exorbitant is the right word. A subscription model for a UI enhancement app is pretty ridiculous no matter what the price. Likewise, $20 to remove ads is absurd. A much more reasonable approach would be to charge upgrade fees to pay the dev for continued development as Lemmy evolves.
By contrast Tasker, an app that provides serious Android customization & script capabilities that enable users to enhance their entire Android experience, costs just $3.50.
As a long time Sync for Reddit user I planned to buy the Sync for Lemmy app but noped on out of there when I saw the pricing.
IMO the dev is trying to quickly replace his lost Sync for Reddit revenue before the Lemmy user base has grown enough to make that possible with reasonable pricing. Good for him that many of you are willing to pay what he’s asking, but I’ll be sticking with some of the other excellent apps available right now.
The difference is that some users have been using sync for a decade and using Lemmy for only a month. So it’s a lot easier to mentally justify supporting a developer who you’ve been benefiting from for so long.
I have also donated to my local instance, I really hope to see it all grow together.
The problem is that, for that decade, Sync has been benefiting from reddit, and now Lemmy. And reddit/Lemmy were the ones footing the majority of the operating costs so that Sync could be useful.
While obviously not a perfect example, think of it as letting your friend stay in your spare room. And then they decide to run a business out of that room and you have customers coming at all hours of the day.
This is increasingly a concern with the modern internet. All of those super popular streamers and youtubers? They are profiting off the content of game devs and other youtubers (ironically, it is the hot tub streamers who are stealing the least content). And plenty of content creators have come out and talked about how they increasingly hate “Reaction” content (Hasan getting special mention for just playing full videos to his chat while he has a piss break).
I am glad Sync is a product people feel is worth paying for. Not my thang, but it doesn’t need to be. But… let’s just say that if the only thing to come out of the reddit debacles over the past few months were “Third party apps need to serve ads or pay for expensive API keys” I would probably actively not care.
Just to be clear. I very much feel that creators deserve to get paid, even if they build on top of the work of others. Maybe less so people who just stream content with no comment while they take a shit but, generally speaking, even just interacting with chat while you play a round of Valorant is “transformative” in my book.
But it DOES suck how many developers, services, and creators are more or less getting screwed over in the interest of “exposure”.
Reddit has benefitted from Sync, and other 3rd party apps, way more than Sync has benefitted from Reddit.
It’s less clear cut with Lemmy, which is supposed to evolve an ecosystem of free tools, so it might be that some day Sync will be benefitting from Lemmy more than Lemmy from Sync… but for now, Lemmy is relatively bare bones, like what Reddit used to be 15 years ago, so any 3rd party app with extra features is still a good thing.
Fortunately, Lemmy has no incentive to go closed source, like Reddit did (let’s not forget Reddit used to be open source while it was convenient for them, then it wasn’t).
Why did reddit benefit from Sync but Lemmy doesn’t? In both cases, it is a third party app (with premium options or ads that support Sync and not the service it is engaging with) that greatly increases utility for “power users”. So that more or less means that it provides “exposure” by encouraging power users to make the content that casual users will come back to the site for.
And there is the argument that that actually could be bad if the product has no viable monetization strategy but user count keeps increasing but… yeah.
The 100$ is very much a premium tier with nice to have features. The ad free version is around 20$, which is still steep but you’re paying for lifetime ads.
I’m disabled and on a fixed income. I make less than minimum wage. The only thing I have to contribute are my occasional keen thoughts, but if you need me to leave, I can. I get that a lot.
I won’t be buying or using Sync, as its pricing is prohibitive and ads sometimes include malware.
but if you need me to leave, I can. I get that a lot.
I don’t think OP is suggesting this. It’s simply a reminder to those who have the privilege of having extra income that contributing to the core devs improves the experience for everyone, regardless of their individual ability to contribute.
I’m personally happy to donate if it means everyone gets to continue enjoying the growth of the platform, as the real value of the threadiverse is user activity.
While I’m all for using an ad-blocker, I don’t think you have to worry too much about Google Ads containing malware, particularly if you don’t click through.
AFAIK Google has pretty strict restrictions around the type and format of ads they will push and ad campaigns have to get approval before being activated.
So while I do strongly feel that everyone should be using an ad-blocker, I don’t think malicious ads are of particular concern coming from Google’s ad platform, on an android device.
I’m not English native and I often see Google ads in my language. Many of them are of very low quality and some ads connect to phishing links, weird apps or cover contents. I don’t think Google strictly restrict them…
I don’t think the Lemmy devs are getting that much either from funding. I feel like an attitude of supporting all tiers that make this place work will be necessary.
I don’t subscribe as a rule these days.Subscription fatigue is a real thing but I do make one time payments to regularly used services or apps across the year. I guess it’s like tipping in that respect, I do it when I feel I should.
For Sync, the subscription seemed steep for an app for a platform I’m still only starting to use and don’t use anywhere near Reddit levels (by design I might add) plus the one time payment seems similarly steep. I bought the pro for Reddit about 2 years before Reddit went full ham and was ready to spend the £8 of Google credit I have on it again if it turned out I used it/lemmy more than I do.
The issue I found is that feeding that back on anything like this hit the cult wall and you just get a lot of angry posting about you being cheap or just use the ads etc. Hell, you can see the same posts even in this thread which is only tangentially related to that whole quagmire. I had hoped that lemmy would be less vitriolic and more discussion based even on these kinds of things but I guess people are just tribalistic regardless.
Yeah i think cult mentality is the problem. If someone doesn’t want to pay or cannot pay, it’s their choice/circumstances. If they don’t like sync’s pricing and wanna stick to FOSS apps, it’s their choice. I don’t like to see people pushing around others for their choice of what they think is the best.
I agree that subscription fatigue is a huge thing, and I avoid services as a rule of thumb unless there are real reasons for the subscription, ie ongoing usage based costs.
That said, I view $2 a month as a reasonable subscription cost, and if Reddit had charged that I would have happily paid it to keep bacon reader. It’s only the one time payment cost that is very steep ($99).
I chip in $5/mo for lemmy.world to help pay to keep it ad free and running
If the sync dev would be fair and not greedy, he would give at least the 2/3 of his revenues from the app to the Lemmy devs and the instances. Otherwise, I guess instances should be able to block these apps.
I understand everyone need to earn something. And keeping max 1/3 is good.
People need to understand and in priority the people coming from Reddit that Lemmy is not reddit. Reddit earns money with ads and investors. They could inject ads through the APIs and states in the usage terms that 3rd party devs could not remove them. They didn’t do it.
Lemmy is a complet other story. Lemmy rely on donations. So, when someone donates to the Lemmy devs and/or instances, the dev of a paid app is making money on this donation. Without the Lemmy devs and the instances, the paid app would not exist at all. It’s not fair at all to not share the revenue of these apps.
These paid apps and their devs are at best predators and at least parasitics.
This whole comment is ridiculous. People are happy to pay for a better experience (for them). You can do/say whatever you want. So can I. So can he. Things in the world aren’t free. There is a continual narrative that everything should be FOSS. In a perfect world: sure. In our world we need money to live.
I’m happy to pay for the ad free version of sync. And happy that the profits go to the app maker to do whatever he wants.
Making up fractions like 1/3 is useless and arbitrary at best. You have no idea how much he makes or even what 1/3 would mean.
Edit: If instances block these apps, it defeats the purpose of an open fediverse. … also sounds just like reddit.
Did I write that? I explicitly wrote he can keep 1/3. It doesn’t make it free at all, knowing the other 2/3 going to the Lemmy devs and instances. Nothing is free in this model. It’s about the fairness.
1/3 isn’t arbitrary. You have 3 parties here, the app dev, the lemmy devs and the lemmy instances. The first relies entirely on the second and the third, who are in a donation model. Without these two, the first is at best useless, therefore giving 2/3 to the other parties is fine. Cutting the revenues of the app in 3 for each party is fair.
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