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?

  • Stovetop@lemmy.mlEnglish
    156·
    1 year 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
      68·
      1 year 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.

      • FurbyOnSteroids@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        14·
        1 year ago

        Sure would be cool if this kind of information was provided outside of a proprietary service that not only requires a login but also you to join a specific server just to then have this be hidden by 1,500 random messages that you don’t care about. Shame there is no such place.

      • Gazumbo@lemmy.worldEnglish
        5·
        1 year ago

        Can someone explain what this means. The ads/tracking is not activated in Sync for Lemmy? If so, why have it in the code.

        • Duallight@lemmy.todayEnglish
          7·
          1 year ago

          Basically all tracking is done by Google ads. It checks at start up if you have purchased ad free or not. If purchased, launch app without ad library, else launch with ads. It has to be in the code because (according to the dev) Google is cracking down on similar apps, ie a pro version and a free version. So ad library has to be included, and it just won’t use it if you pay for pro

    • scribsEnglish
      51·
      1 year 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.

    • randint@lemm.eeEnglish
      37·
      1 year ago

      Please note that the long list of things collected is what Google is known to collect, not necessarily that these are the things being collected. If you click on any other app that is also with Google trackers (practically every app listed on this page), you will find that the stuff listed are the same.

        • Tangent5280@lemmy.worldEnglish
          16·
          1 year 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.

          • Ghost@lemmy.mlEnglish
            5·
            1 year ago

            I feel the same way. As someone who studies and works in cyber security I love teaching people about how to stay safe or at least as safe as possible.

            Some people don’t go the degree I go to just to keep my stuff secure. I use hardened Arch kernels and I hardly even use arch my entire time I spend on a PC is through a VM. I have 2 computers one just for windows and gaming and then one for Linux and cyber security and coding stuff

            I hate dual booting and do not like windows being close to my Linux install so I keep them separate on two different computers 😂

            Other than doing 3D printing and rendering stuff all I do is study malware and writing my own programs.

            • Tangent5280@lemmy.worldEnglish
              3·
              1 year ago

              Man, you’re living my dream! I also have a windows machine relegated to gaming. Can you expand on using a VM when you want to use your computer? Is that a viable alternative? How is ease of use and boot up times? Do you use Linux on the VMs also? Do you see any performance issues in the actual PC when using the VM in parallel?

              • Ghost@lemmy.mlEnglish
                2·
                1 year ago

                Most of my days are spent writing malware and studying and testing it to see how it infects a system and how to learn how to stop it I also study malware I find online.

                When I say I use a VM almost all my time I don’t mean it as my actual “computer”

                My computer is a 24 core threadripper beast with 64gbs of ram. When I study malware I do it strictly through a VM and when I’m browsing the word or YouTube I use a VM.

                When I’m doing activities such as 3D printing and running my print farm I do not use a VM as it takes a lot of processing power and graphics power to run those programs.

                I just like using VMs to learn about open sourced software and how it works and I like breaking and fixing things.

                Cyber security is amazing but also sucks when you get a call at 3am lol

                If you have any questions send me a message :D

        • sec@lemmy.worldEnglish
          7·
          1 year ago

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

        • ryannathans@lemmy.fmhy.netEnglish
          2·
          1 year 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
      14·
      1 year 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 😅

      • randint@lemm.eeEnglish
        7·
        1 year ago

        It is their browser. The tracking protection is in their browser and tells Android that it’s a VPN.

  • fisco™🇬🇧🇺🇦@lemmy.mlEnglish
    136·
    1 year 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…

    • peterpan520@feddit.deEnglish
      95·
      1 year 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.

    • Michal@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      69·
      1 year 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.

    • Bobby Bandwidth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      59·
      1 year ago

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

      • monkey@lemmy.worldEnglish
        23·
        1 year 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
          6·
          1 year ago

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

            • moitoi@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              I care as having it or not is two different situations. It had a layer of protection without it.

              • donslaught@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                1·
                1 year ago

                That’s true, but according to the Dev Google is cracking down on devs having two versions of an app (i.e. a basic ad-supported version and a pro ad-free version) and I believe if you want an app on the Google store it has to have to ad code in it. That last part I’m not sure if that only applies to apps that will have ads in them.

                • moitoi@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  1·
                  1 year ago

                  But, the dev doesn’t comply with gdpr. It’s opt-out by default what is not the case.

                  So to access the payment, you have to share private and personal datas. This isn’t fine at all. He should offer the option to buy without being tracked.

        • deweydecibel@lemmy.mlEnglish
          24·
          1 year 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
            19·
            1 year ago

            Funding from donations only gets you so far.

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

            Wikipedia makes it work.

          • novettamEnglish
            10·
            1 year ago

            Too soon, being taken advantage of?

            The developer has a track record, we already know the product being delivered and the terms.

            The fan base are the people who were already using Sync for Reddit.

            The people who like me had used Sync for Reddit since 2017. Sync always had ads and the inherent tracking, I paid 2.69€ in Jan 2017 to remove ads and support the development.

            (When In 2022 the developer added another support level where you had access to early betas, I paid again 4.99€, because I’m an early adopter and wanted to support again because I never went the subscription route)

            I have also setup a monthly donation towards my Lemmy instance.

            It might feel too soon because Ljdawson moves fast.

          • _spiffy@lemmy.caEnglish
            4·
            1 year 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)

          • janWilejan@kbin.social
            2·
            1 year ago

            People have been saying some variant of “the fediverse won’t work at scale if it stays free and without ads” for a decade now. And yet it keeps growing despite remaining free and without ads.

            • syrinori@lemmy.worldEnglish
              2·
              1 year ago

              What scale is it at and what scale are we comparing it to? For Lemmy the comparison is reddit, and there is absolutely no way donations would cover the sheer cost of compute required to compete with a user base of that size.

              I’m not going to bother looking into the numbers but I’m thinking all of the fediverse together doesn’t even come close to that user base.

            • njinx@lemmy.worldEnglish
              1·
              1 year ago

              lemmy.world has frequent outages that last most of the day. It wouldn’t say its exactly smooth sailing

      • Corhen@lemmy.worldEnglish
        8·
        1 year ago

        There is now a one time payment of $20 usd ($30 cad) to remove ads, an ongoing $20 cad a year subscription for ad free + additional services, or a one time, $99 usd payment for lifetime access to ad free + pro services.

        So a nice selection!

    • SatanicNotMessianic@lemmy.mlEnglish
      20·
      1 year 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
        9·
        1 year ago

        Just imagine: Microsoft creating a lemmy.xbox.com and creating centralized gaming communities like !halo@lemmy.xbox.com or !doom@lemmy.bethesda.com 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
          6·
          1 year 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
          6·
          1 year 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.

    • solarizde@feddit.deEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

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

    • kebabslobEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      Yep lol. IDC how good your app is if I don’t know what’s it doing with my data I’m not paying!

  • awwwyissss@lemm.eeEnglish
    122·
    1 year 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.

    • Wet@lemmy.worldEnglish
      39·
      1 year ago

      Same for me. Tried disabling personal data for all advertisers but you gotta go one by one, there’s no Reject all option and there are way too many… so back to Connect.

      • honey_im_meat_grindingEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Yikes. That’s a GDPR violation, let’s hope they fix that and add a reject all option before they get fined.

    • Powerpoint@lemmy.caEnglish
      16·
      1 year ago

      I was just pointed towards infinity for Lemmy. It’s pretty solid, open source, no ads

    • Tangent5280@lemmy.worldEnglish
      15·
      1 year ago

      The exact same for me, and I had just made a new account to use with sync for lemmy - logged in via sync, then read the privacy policy, logged out, and closed the app. I was crushed because now I couldn’t even use the cool username I signed up with anywhere else either because now the admachines already knew it and probably already attached it to my device ID.

      • Stumblinbear@pawb.socialEnglish
        13·
        1 year ago

        GA collects very limited information by default. You have to go pretty far out of your way to give Google usernames, posts, etc for ad purposes. It’s likely the only thing they received was a device identifier generated specifically for the new install of the app. You’re fine.

      • awwwyissss@lemm.eeEnglish
        10·
        1 year ago

        Yeah that’s the shitty thing about interacting with these corporate spying services, they’re very good at invading your privacy and making connections to break your anonymity.

      • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldEnglish
        3·
        1 year ago

        You most likely can use the account, unless the author is intentionally doing something shady, Google doesn’t know your username from this interaction.

    • Wahots@pawb.socialEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I’ve been using DDG for tracking, and Connect had all sorts of weird tracking when I used it. Check it out with some network monitor and make sure it’s not sending back your info.

      • awwwyissss@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for the info. Which ones are open source and don’t track? Liftoff and Jerboa?

        • Wahots@pawb.socialEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          Jerboa seems clean so far! Haven’t tried Liftoff much as I didn’t like the UI.

  • andysteakfries@lemmy.worldEnglish
    105·
    1 year 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.

  • GlitchSir@lemmy.worldEnglish
    55·
    1 year 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
      18·
      1 year 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.

  • guriinii@lemmy.worldEnglish
    34·
    1 year ago

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

    • Madbrad200@lemmy.worldEnglish
      26·
      1 year ago

      This can be deceiving for link aggregator apps, because it’ll also pick up trackers that other sites are using, and not the app itself.

      • blackbarn@lemm.eeEnglish
        13·
        1 year ago

        In addition as the earlier reply mentions – “typically” collect. It has no knowledge of the data I believe. Simply what tracker is used and what it can be used for. Good for who, but not for what.

  • Skates@feddit.nlEnglish
    26·
    1 year 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.

        • Tangent5280@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          1 year ago

          How does the app know you’re from Europe? GPS? Geolocation tagging? Can someone hypothetically pretend to be from Europe too?

          • Rikudou_Sage@lemmings.worldEnglish
            2·
            1 year ago

            Usually IP address. For other things it would have to have your permission (and if you give a Lemmy app permission for your location, well it’s on you). You could probably use an EU VPN. Though I’m not sure of their implementation, they might disregard your choices if you disconnect from VPN.

      • Skates@feddit.nlEnglish
        6·
        1 year ago

        I was prompted to consent to some stuff, which I unchecked. Then there was a “vendor preferences” button, where they were basically saying “ok, even if you don’t consent, maybe you still wanna give them access if they have a legitimate interest”. So since I have also a legitimate interest in not giving my data to shady fucking companies, I spent the next 10 minutes removing ticks from boxes basically, because fuck giving me a choice to “uncheck all”, that would make it too easy to opt out.

        Edit: and then to make it even more fun, I found a button somewhere in settings where I could remove my consent for gdpr-related reasons. So I clicked it. You wanna guess what it did? If you’re guessing it removed my consent, sorry - it actually removed my “lack of consent” - that is to say, it reset the settings and prompted me to uncheck everything again. Cool beans.

  • stankmut@lemm.eeEnglish
    15·
    1 year 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
    12·
    1 year 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
    8·
    1 year 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.