this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
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Boost For Lemmy

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I would much prefer this piece of shit die in obscurity, thanks

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[โ€“] Telorand@reddthat.com 199 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Pretty sure that's Google's deal. I don't think the dev gets to decide which ads they show you.

ETA: Also, just buy the app. It's a few dollars, it helps pay for the development, and you never have to see any ads.

[โ€“] citrusface@lemmy.world 42 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Fr. Buy the app. Make your life better.

[โ€“] phanto@lemmy.ca 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Non-Play Store Tablet. Bought the app, still get the ads... Pi hole for the win!

[โ€“] dgriffith@aussie.zone 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Bought the app, still get the ads...

That.... sounds like something that you should reach out to @rmayayo@lemmy.world and talk about.

[โ€“] tooclose104@lemmy.ca 6 points 8 months ago

Love me pi hole

[โ€“] Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

The are so many awesome free Lemmy apps, it's weird that some people pay for them...

[โ€“] Traister101@lemmy.today 27 points 8 months ago

It's weird that you guys cannot seem to comprehend the idea of devs being paid for their work. Free stuff is great. I put my own shit online for free but you know something I don't do? Maintain an app with 100k+ downloads. Maybe the guy deserves to make some money off his hard work...

[โ€“] Telorand@reddthat.com 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Those free Lemmy apps cost time and effort to create and maintain; if people want to give their stuff away for free, that's their business. In any case, I tried those other apps, and I didn't like them (likely because they've put hobbyist levels of effort into them rather than a paid-worker's amount). And because they're free, I would never dream of asking for more features (which is tantamount to saying, "Yo, dev. Give me more free shit!").

Besides, we're talking about a few dollars to support a single dev. Not like Ruben has teams of people working for him in some faceless megacorp making billions of dollars.

Boost has the features I like with the layout I like, and I paid a few dollars mainly as a tip to the dev, which just happens to come with the added benefit of no ads.

[โ€“] kitnaht@lemmy.world 87 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Imagine believing that Boost specifically developed their own ad network and dictate what is/isn't on it...

[โ€“] obinice@lemmy.world 24 points 8 months ago (4 children)

If you're not capable of dictating what appears in your own company's product, maybe that's something to rethink?

[โ€“] kitnaht@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

It's not a choice you get. There's only a handful of ad networks out there, and you get to choose one. If you don't do that, the only other option is to make people pay for your stuff - which most won't do because they're so accustomed to ads.

[โ€“] TheGalacticVoid@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago

You can't force the ad networks to rethink. As a dev, your choice would be to completely paywall the app.

[โ€“] cjoll4@lemmy.world 7 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Should Ruben vet the entire Lemmyverse while he's at it so he can "dictate what appears in his product?"

As a solo developer with limited resources, one has four choices:

โ€ข Choose an existing ad network and do the best you can within its content preferences,

โ€ข Put a paywall on your app's features and hope enough people will actually buy it,

โ€ข Work for free, sacrificing your own livelihood, or

โ€ข Don't develop the app.

Clearly they all involve a compromise of one form or another, and I trust that Ruben put a lot of thought into the decision.

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[โ€“] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 77 points 8 months ago (2 children)

If you don't like ads and don't want to pay to remove ads on a Lemmy app, use Voyager, Jerboa, or any of the other many FOSS, ad free, Lemmy apps.

[โ€“] ChexMax@lemmy.world 29 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I don't understand why people are using apps with ads. What is the reason? Is connect selling my data and boost isn't? Why would you pick an app that has ads when so many don't?

[โ€“] nawa@lemmy.world 26 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Because apps with ads (specifically Sync that I use) have better UX and more features than anything open-source. Sorry but that's it.

[โ€“] barsquid@lemmy.world 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Better UX

Ads

IDK something isn't adding up.

[โ€“] nawa@lemmy.world 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yes because ads are the only thing making a difference in the comfort of using an app. Comfortable design (that doesn't try to cram a million things into a small phone screen) and intuitive navigation mean nothing I guess.

[โ€“] barsquid@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Not cramming things into a phone screen

Ads

Are we in the same reality?

[โ€“] nawa@lemmy.world 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Perhaps you could get off your high open-source horse and try reading what I actually wrote. I'm talking about cramming in a million buttons and 0.1 line height so there are 20 comments shown at once. I don't need my mobile app to look like old.reddit.com, I need it to be actually readable and usable from a small screen. Ads (which are shown in the feed and can be scrolled past) have nothing to do with that.

Lol sync users are so brainwashed and will say anything to justify it. Connect is so nice and usable, i haven't had a single issue with it since I started using it months ago. Jerboa has also come a long way, but was a little raw at the time and so I mostly got used to connect.

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I guess everyone has their own level of tolerance for ads.

To me, anything ad supported has a terrible "UX". I'd put up with a lot to avoid ads.

Obviously you don't care about ads and that's fine too

[โ€“] Abby@lemm.ee 4 points 8 months ago

Have you tried clients that are focused on good design like Voyager or Photon?

[โ€“] hank_the_tank66@lemmy.world 5 points 8 months ago

I'm legitimately confused because I use Boost and don't see ads.

I assume my PiHole stops them on my home network, and maybe DDG does elsewhere? Not 100% sure, but it works for now.

[โ€“] Max_P@lemmy.max-p.me 4 points 7 months ago

A lot of us here came from Boost for Reddit, where we had bought it there so we bought the Lemmy version too and never seen ads.

I'm a big fan of open-source but sometimes it's worth throwing the $3.50 for a proprietary app that works well, especially with how the Lemmy app landscape looked a year ago. It's better now, but I like how Boost works and have used it for years on Reddit.

The only free app that's somewhat close to Boost's presentation is Jerboa, and Jerboa is just a bit too buggy for my taste.

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[โ€“] Jimbo@yiffit.net 50 points 8 months ago

You get... Ads?

[โ€“] Xideta@ani.social 38 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Whilst developers can ban specific ads, they can't really vet them beforehand. I think you can opt out of political ads (or maybe could at one point), but technically the ad you see is just for another app.

As an alternative solution to the ones already posed by others, you can use "Google Opinion Rewards" to get enough play store credit to buy the app. Every so often it'll just ask if you googled "Ninja Coffee Bar" (literally), and give you 10-25 cents for answering, and typically a good bit more for any follow-up questions ("How helpful were the results", etc).

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[โ€“] ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 32 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Honestly the ads are why I quit using boost when it came out. Jerboa is completely ad free with a similar enough UI that it's not that hard of a transition.

[โ€“] remotelove@lemmy.ca 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Connect is simple and ad free as well. I've been using it since I joined Lemmy as it was the closest I could find to RIF.

Regardless, there are plenty of options out there.

[โ€“] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I don't get the tribalism around apps.

Somme are good, others less-so.

None are worth putting up with ads for.

[โ€“] Telorand@reddthat.com 9 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Expecting free software is the problem. Software development isn't free from time or effort.

[โ€“] remotelove@lemmy.ca 4 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That is the reason to donate to the devs of free apps when possible.

[โ€“] FierySpectre@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Permanent ad free for boost is less than a cup of coffee in a Starbucks... The dev deserves to be paid for their time (especially as a Lemmy app actually requires maintenance for updates to Lemmy).

Sure hate on shovelware games or games with 15 DLC's that should have been part of the base game... But don't hate on proper apps like boost.

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[โ€“] RandomVideos@programming.dev 27 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Truth social is a FOSS social media. The app is just, based on you liking other FOSS social medias, recommending apps in the same category.

(Also, would anyone on lemmy use truth social seriously?)

[โ€“] Telorand@reddthat.com 4 points 8 months ago

Maybe if they were some kind of political or psychological researcher...?

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[โ€“] Voyajer@lemmy.world 27 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Siphoning money from truth social seems like the best case for an ad you were never going to click on anyway

[โ€“] Zos_Kia 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Even better you should click it in case they are billed by click

[โ€“] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Ads are billed by click, you're correct.

[โ€“] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Any place we could find more details on this? Wonder if setting up an ad clicker would be a decent way to drain their funds (if many people do it of course).

[โ€“] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 7 points 8 months ago

Theoretically it is. There's actually an add on for Firefox now called adnauseum that auto clicks every ad it blocks (it's ublock origin under the hood). You don't see it happen, but in theory it costs the advertisers money and also scrambles your advertising profile since it clicks everything.

If you want to learn more just look up ad cost on any ad network as if you were going to buy an ad. They break it down in detail.

[โ€“] brown567@sh.itjust.works 5 points 8 months ago

This is a good point

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[โ€“] knobbysideup@sh.itjust.works 21 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Buy the app or use a DNS adblocker. There is no relationship between advertisers and developers. That's the technology world destroyed by marketing that we live in now.

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[โ€“] cupcakezealot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

still don't see why google haven't included politics or political ads under their sensitive ad topics opt outs. :/

[โ€“] citrusface@lemmy.world 29 points 8 months ago

Oh I know the answer to this one! It's because $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.

[โ€“] GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip 4 points 8 months ago

You really dont?

Without political ads their mind shaping powers would be severely reduced. Same as with your data in general, google doesnt want you to keep that to yourself. Sometimes they have to allow you for legal reasons, but they make it as hard as legally possible for you to do.

[โ€“] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 10 points 8 months ago

It's been a while since I've done mobile ad dev, I believe you can blacklist specific ads, but it's like a full-time job to monitor them

[โ€“] sudoku@programming.dev 8 points 8 months ago

Just block the ads

[โ€“] umbrella@lemmy.ml 5 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

adaway works well if you are rooted

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