What constitutes Usage Data. Is it sharing the posts I view, communities I subscribe to etc?

Does paying for a premium version stop this data being collected?

  • fisco™🇬🇧🇺🇦@lemmy.mlEnglish
    908·
    2 years ago

    Doesn’t this ad/subscription model, go against the grain a bit? With Lemmy & the fediverse in general, being an opensource environment, which has no ads, & funded by donations, rather than a subscription model…

    • Bobby Bandwidth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      521·
      2 years ago

      I don’t have an issue with a reasonable subscription, but hard pass on trackers, especially when you’re paying.

      • monkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
        52·
        2 years ago

        Not defending tracking or anything, but you do not get trackers if you pay. This tracker is just for ads, which you don’t get if you pay.

        • moitoi@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          2 years ago

          The issue for me is having the code. If I pay, I want an app without the ads/trackers code.

    • peterpan520@feddit.deEnglish
      514·
      2 years ago

      No, it doesn’t. Unlike Reddit, Twitter, or Threads, Lemmy offers a variety of apps. There are so many that there is something for everyone. Even a “professional” app that finances itself with advertising or a subscription is allowed. The special thing about Lemmy is the freedom of choice.

      • Boinketh@lemm.eeEnglish
        71·
        2 years ago

        I upvoted both of you because you’re both right. An ad/sub model does go against the grain, but the freedom to choose more polish in exchange for the lack of FOSS or vice versa is one of Lemmy’s greatest strengths.

    • _spiffy@lemmy.caEnglish
      461·
      2 years ago

      I would one time pay for this, but a subscription feels meh.

      • fisco™🇬🇧🇺🇦@lemmy.mlEnglish
        142·
        2 years ago

        There are plenty of apps for Lemmy, that aren’t supported by ads, nor should they be, given the whole ethos of the fediverse…

        • deweydecibel@lemmy.mlEnglish
          206·
          2 years ago

          The ethos of the fediverse (insofar as it’s completely free with no ads) won’t be sustainable at scale; income for continued development and support does need to be taken into account at some point, and that goes for servers, frontends, apps, etc. Funding from donations only gets you so far. We will have to talk about it some day.

          However, it is entirely too soon for ads and subscriptions. This feels openly and brazenly like talking advantage of Sync overly enthusiastic fanclub and the Sync name recognition. Get in early with a big name and start making money before any other big name apps like Boost are released.

          • Kichae@kbin.social
            141·
            2 years ago

            Funding from donations only gets you so far.

            Then maybe that’s as far as we should go?

            Wikipedia makes it work.

            • golli@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              2 years ago

              Another example would be lichess.org , which manages to compete with chess.com (a comercial site) and even pays the main developer a salary. All based purely through donations.

              I think it can definitely work even in the long run.

          • _spiffy@lemmy.caEnglish
            2·
            2 years ago

            I feel like as long as your home instance can keep alive with donations then it will scale well. If your home instance starts needing a subscription or shows ads you could always migrate elsewhere. (But that’s a pain I have already done that)

    • HughJanus@lemmy.mlEnglish
      473·
      2 years ago

      Funding your project with donations is just not a realistic long-term goal. This is why so many instances fold up shop in just a couple of weeks as their servers are overloaded and no one donates money to keep it up.

      Capitalism is a problem but it doesn’t mean everything has to be socialism. There can be an in-between.

      • variants@possumpat.ioEnglish
        61·
        2 years ago

        I believe its possible, at least coming from the minecraft world. if the instance doesnt grow as big as lemmy.world or something then you can ask for patrons and other ways to get donations. a lot of the plugins I use for my minecraft servers are run this way and its the way i run my server, I just ask for a dollar donation if possible from my players and that covers a little bit more than what the server costs me to run. when I check some of the plugin’s patreon page they pull in about 1k-8k a month
        https://www.patreon.com/coreprotect

        https://www.patreon.com/sonicether

        • Boinketh@lemm.eeEnglish
          4·
          2 years ago

          Yeah, pretty much all Minecraft servers rely on donations to stay up and most of the ones that have an active player-base are able to stay up for years. Granted, many servers give certain perks to donors, but those perks are entirely cosmetic in many instances. Maybe what Lemmy needs is to add donor tags so that donors get a little bit of pizzazz on their names.

          • cooper@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            4·
            2 years ago

            The reddit gold model didn’t work. Reddit was a VC funded start up though, so if was expected to make a lot more than just enough to keep the servers going.

            I’d bet lemmy instances can get by on donations and reddit style awards. Like you say, it can be incentivized further with cosmetic rewards.

            • Tangent5280@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              2 years ago

              Let’s not follow reddit through the enshittification manifesto. There has to be another solution, and we won’t find any if we allow ourselves to settle on the first half baked idea an already failing website had at some point.

    • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.mlEnglish
      10·
      2 years ago

      My go-to analogy is Usenet. Back when usenet basically was the internet for a lot of people, you’d have access to a usenet server through your school, isp, or with a separate subscription to a usenet provider. Usenet itself was free and there were open source implementations of the client and server side components. There were also commercial implementations. The important thing was that net news ran on an open protocol that no company owned. Companies and individuals were free to do what they wanted.

      I would not hesitate to buy a client that achieved the functionality of Apollo, or even Alien Blue. I didn’t really start using reddit until I had a good client, and I can see client-side issues being a hurdle to lemmy adoption. I’d prefer paying for a client over ad support. Still, the free and open source client community should be core going forward. I can even see the potential for a commercial server, once the community reaches critical mass in terms of content.

      I’ve been involved with the foss community since my first linux install back in like 1994 or so. I remember when rms and esr were household names, so long as your household was a dorm room with cs majors. Like with linux (gnu/linux?) commercial and foss apps can co-exist, and like with linux there should remain a foss purist option in addition to the mixed mode option.

      I don’t think the fediverse is facing a threat of commercial takeover - certainly not the lemmyverse. If anything, the threat is not onboarding enough people to be competitive with whatever reddit clone manages to launch in the next year or so, and which has the commercial backing to drive users to the service and have stable, scalable, and production quality code.

      • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        4·
        2 years ago

        Just imagine: Microsoft creating a lemmy.xbox.com and creating centralized gaming communities like [email protected] or [email protected] instead of hosting it on discord or reddit.

        The only issue I see with it are:

        • Liability: They would probably need to disable signups for external users and only allow federation And even then user submitted stuff could be tricky. Tbf (in a halo example I am familiar) they run forums so idk…
        • Ease of use: Lemmy is not easy to understand for aunt Emma or uncle Smitherson. Heck even regular parents are probably overwhelmed by the selection of communities on reddit…
        • Anything else?
        • Dharkstare@kbin.social
          5·
          2 years ago

          This was my thought as well. It makes sense for companies to setup their own Fediverse instances. It provides them a way to reach their customers without having to rely on another company acting as the middleman.

          Mastodon is really solid and with the Dutch government and the BBC running their own instance I imagine others will follow suite.

          Still not sure about a Reddit replacement though since both Lemmy and kBin have their problems.

          Spin up a PeerTube instance and companies have an effective means of setting up discussion forums for their products, a news feed for broadcasting updates, and a video hosting solution that can all be tied together through the Fediverse.

        • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          I totally get that. I watched in real time when MS tried to kill Netscape by bundling Internet Explorer with Windows and used their “embrace and extend” business model to try to reserve the web for their proprietary browser. Ot didn’t work, but there was a lot of pushback both legally and socially.

          I think that we don’t have to worry about MS coming in for a while. I am interested to see how Facebook makes things work if and when they integrate Threads, but afaik no one is in an analogous position in terms of making a commercial, reddit-like experience tied to the fediverse.

          I mean, reddit’s model isn’t that great. They filed for an IPO on Dec 21 for $15B and since then have been marked down to about $5B, and that was before the APIpocalypse. That means that a) all of the current institutional and VC investors lost about 2/3 of their money and that spez and company have similarly seen their ineptitude slash their dreams of Musk-like wealth, and b) value-wise, they’re heading back to 2019 when they were smaller. It’s a terrible time for them to try doing an IPO. The fact that they haven’t pulled it makes it feel like they know the game of musical chairs is winding up and they just want to get out with even a quarter of what they expected.

    • Michal@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      91·
      2 years ago

      You’re free to use any app you want. Some people prefer free open-source apps, some people want to pay for a quality app. It’s good to have a choice unlike with Reddit. I don’t understand people complaining about having additional choice because they don’t like it.

    • solarizde@feddit.deEnglish
      3·
      2 years ago

      I hope there will be a pro version where you can pay to opt out of all ad and track nonsense.

  • Stovetop@lemmy.mlEnglish
    781·
    2 years ago

    From DuckDuckGo:

    For what it’s worth, I subscribed to Ultra about an hour ago and DDG hasn’t picked up any additional tracking attempts since then. I think it may be limited entirely to Google’s ad service for the free, ad-supported tier and maybe crash diagnostics that the app gives you the option of enabling or disabling.

    • gaydarless@lemmy.caEnglish
      41·
      2 years ago

      I think that the lack of further attempts backs up what lj shared a bit ago in the Discord. That’s still a hell of a lot of tracking for folks who can’t or don’t want to pay, though.

    • scribs@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      281·
      2 years ago

      FWIW that page is a bit deceptive , it’s not saying it’s collecting all of that data. The only info on that page is “146 tracking attempts from Google”, which makes sense if it has Google ads.

    • Boinketh@lemm.eeEnglish
      12·
      2 years ago

      Holy hell. I’m glad I’m using DNS-level ad and tracker blocking. Shout out to NextDNS and RethinkDNS!

        • Tangent5280@lemmy.worldEnglish
          5·
          2 years ago

          I am so happy whenever I see people asking more about privacy practices. It makes me feel like the fight is not so hopeless after all.

        • sec@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4·
          2 years ago

          Not for youtube, you can use smarttube for android tv. It has everything, like sponsorblock etc

        • ryannathans@lemmy.fmhy.netEnglish
          1·
          2 years ago

          Tracker blocking youtube results in new videos not adding to your history, recommendations freezing permanently, youtube just regurgitates the same stuff and seemingly never refreshes

    • ShakeThatYam@lemmy.worldEnglish
      10·
      2 years ago

      I would really love to know what ads are targeting low battery levels. Chargers and battery packs obviously. But I wonder what else being at 5% tells you about a person 😅

  • awwwyissss@lemm.eeEnglish
    7015·
    2 years ago

    I got to that exact screen and my excitement went from 100 to like 10. I’m back on Connect, didn’t even take Sync out for a spin.

  • GlitchSir@lemmy.worldEnglish
    43·
    2 years ago

    Since it’s admob my guess is it’s Google analytics. Which means everything you look at or touch, but it’s probably as much for the developer so they can see how users are reacting to the app layout and designs.

    The developer should move to an open source platform for analytics if this bothers users.

    • just_another_person@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      2 years ago

      GA can only collect what you specifically give it (clicks, touches, hovers…etc), so the developer should be able to be very specific here. Using GA by default only collects very basic impression info.

  • andysteakfries@lemmy.worldEnglish
    253·
    2 years ago

    LJ was very adamant about not collecting or keeping any user data under the reddit regime. I’m happy giving him the benefit of the doubt here.

      • andysteakfries@lemmy.worldEnglish
        9·
        2 years ago

        The dev has stated that the tracking is disabled if ads are disabled, and other users have confirmed that via duckduckgo.

      • andysteakfries@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        “Benefit of the doubt” does not mean “blindly trust”…?

        Listen you can do what you want if you feel your privacy is being violated, but this particular developer is not scamming anyone. He has an established history of not giving a fuck about your user data, which is backed up by other users verifying that the data tracking ends when ads are removed.

  • Skates@feddit.nlEnglish
    201·
    2 years ago

    Aside from this, I just spent 10 minutes removing consent for advertising/cookies/tracking/whatever for about 100 different vendors. I really hope I don’t need to do that again, ever.

  • guriinii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9·
    2 years ago

    Use a duckduckgo tracker blocker. It’ll show you what trackers it has and what they typically collect.

  • stankmut@lemm.eeEnglish
    91·
    2 years ago

    The data is less about what you are personally doing and more things like which device does a user have, which country is a user from, how often do they use the app, and how often do they click on ads.

    You can dig more into what admob means by usage data here: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/9263723

  • Holodeck_Moriarty@lemm.eeEnglish
    7·
    2 years ago

    Yeah, I saw this too when I went to download, and this bothers me a little bit. None of the other Lemmy apps I use collect my data.

    Is this decision set in stone?

  • spez@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    5·
    2 years ago

    Will you be able to one-time-pay beforehand? Before all these trackers take effect or will they still stay after the purchase? Pretty hard to consider a non-FOSS app that tracks you even if you pay. Might be great for lemmy’s adoption but not for the fediverse’ spirit.

    • redcalcium@lemmy.instituteEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      I subscribed to Ultra and hasn’t seen any weird activity on my Adguard logs. I guess the what the dev said about the ad SDK not being initialized when you subscribe is true.