this post was submitted on 02 Aug 2023
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[–] FarFarAway@startrek.website 42 points 1 year ago (7 children)

I was not a previous sync user, but it seems to be a beloved app. Although...

I am somewhat surprised at the use of personal data in the privacy policy.

I understand a guy's gotta make a living, but with all the hype, I'm not sure I expected this.

[–] A_Toasty_Strudel@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago (2 children)

On top of all that there's an ongoing subscription service to use the premium features of the app. I'd happily pay $10-$20 one time for the app, but there's no way in hell I'm paying monthly for a bit of scrolling when Jerboa does the same stuff with no ads for free.

[–] zaph@lemmy.world 17 points 1 year ago

Lj has states he intends to introduce a one time payment for ad removal in the near future. People getting huffy over a 6-pack a year fee can rest easy soon enough.

[–] tja@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago

There is now a one time payment option to remove ads

[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It says it'd collect "device information" and "Usage data". What does that even mean?

[–] UnverifiedAPK@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Where you look, what you look at, how long you look, and where you ~~click~~ tap.

[–] lowleveldata@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago

So it's just everything

[–] Stumblinbear@pawb.social 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I'm a dev so can shed some light. It's likely linked to a service called Firebase, which gives many tools to track how people use your app. You can run tests against sections of your user base to determine the best way to apply certain features before rolling them out, as well as crash reporting and the ability to see "user journeys." These "journeys" are often used to determine how to better structure an app so that users can get to where they want to go more quickly. It's a way of collecting user feedback without asking for user feedback. It's incredibly useful for feature development and bug fixing

Now, given they have ads, they're probably using Google adsense which is likely linked to firebase, so Google may get some information on how people use the app in order to increase revenue per impression. This is largely automatic

[–] covecove@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

yeah same here, sticking to jerboa for now. I hope it's not going to be the same for boost for lemmy.

does anyone know if the privacy policy is only for the "free" version of sync? app store says the free version has ads too, I guess you can buy it at some point to get rid of them.

[–] jungekatz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Same , i was not using it previously , but i can see the privacy policy is not good ! There are good open source apps !

[–] Stumblinbear@pawb.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even with ads Sync is a thousand miles ahead of Jerboa in terms of usability and experience. I'll happily have ads to not have an objectively worse experience

[–] covecove@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

maybe,I wouldn't even mind paying for ads. I mainly don't like being mined for data.

edit: paying for removing ads of course.

[–] TXinTXe@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 year ago

Probably for the ads?

[–] vox@sopuli.xyz 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

it's only used by third parties like admob.
if you're a paying user, admob library is not loaded at all, and crashlytics can be disabled in the settings.

[–] FarFarAway@startrek.website 1 points 1 year ago

Thank you for the clarification.

[–] Xero@infosec.pub 0 points 1 year ago

I owned a Sync license but never used it, I preferred Relay. I think I had five or six licenses for Reddit apps including Relay.