The Boost android client for Lemmy is displaying these dark pattern ads pretending to be system notifications. What security/privacy conscious Lemmy clients do you recommend?

rmayayo , 5 months ago

Boost dev here. There should be an Ad icon on the top right to report the ad. Not sure why it is not showing in this case. I will try to block those ads in the AdMob console. Edit: Done

dannym , 5 months ago

I'm not a boost user, but why does boost have ads exactly? Why don't you just ask users to buy a license a la grayjay? Make it 0.99 or less. This has a few advantages:

• You'll make more per user than you ever will with ads
• Users won't be tracked endlessly
• It's good PR for the app

Also quick question, where is the source code for Boost? I can't seem to find it

haruajsuru , 5 months ago

I don't think Boost is open source, and you can pay a one time fee to permanently remove the ads

dannym , 5 months ago

I don’t think Boost is open source

oh, so that's why it has ads, they don't care about their users... alright... I'm not interested in this conversation anymore

haruajsuru , 5 months ago

This is a bad mindset. Even though FOSS software is a good thing, but there is nothing wrong to make money from their hard work, you cannot and should not force developers to work for free if they don't want to.

If you want free software then there are FOSS alternative options out there and nobody forces you to use Boost.

hackris , 5 months ago

Please. For the love of god, NEVER use a proprietary app to use a piece of FOSS software. I think it's kind of sad that we have this amazing FOSS social network and people use fucking proprietary software to use it.

pirrrrrrrr , 5 months ago

Open-source it a better interface then.

Until it's as useful as at least Sync for Lemmy, people will use 3rd party proprietary apps

vox , 5 months ago

i use sync. there's nothing even close to the quality of the client. (The onlt client that implements material you in a fun and usable way, sync is usable one-handed)
I had been using Liftoff for a while (before switching to Sync as soon as it came out), which i quite liked but it feels a lot worse than sync

cypherpunks , 5 months ago

(The onlt client that implements material you in a fun and usable way, sync is usable one-handed)

Touchscreen keyboards and their consequences have been a disaster for the human race.

haui_lemmy , 4 months ago

Indeed.

LemoineFairclough , 5 months ago

Why would you need an app when an account settings page and a web interface for posts exist? What need is that combination not meeting for you?

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InEnduringGrowStrong , 5 months ago

Yup, lemmy works fine in a browser.
Also basically no apps support mod and admin actions or do it weird.
I'll say that DMs could be a bit better in the browser, but otherwise it's fine.

Thorny_Insight , 5 months ago

I don't undestand the need to have an app for stuff that works just fine on browser. In my books less apps is always better. The desktop and mobile version of Lemmy on browser gets the job done perfectly and is way more polished looking aswell.

taiyang , 5 months ago

Idk, I've tried a few but still like Boost; just can't get into Jerboa or Liftoff, which I tried. It's mostly just their ad network being meh --- though I mostly just get crappy fake gameplay ads, and not enough to bother me. I'm not even sure if they're targeting me, cause if they are, they're pretty bad at it.

Unfortunately I'm sure the app developer doesn't get much say, virtually all mobile app networks are cancer.

ToxicWaste , 5 months ago

Jerboa doesn't have ads..?

BeigeAgenda , 5 months ago

Not even one ad, it's open source same with Eternity.

I switched from Jerboa to Eternity because of the 0.19 update fuss.

rozlav , 5 months ago

What's this fuss about ? I was a Eternity user before Lemmy (I don't recall the name of this app, when it waS reddit)
edit:typo

SuperSpaceFan , 5 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

For Reddit the original app was Infinity. Eternity is a fork of Infinity.

hunt4peas , 5 months ago

I am using Voyager & Eternity and both have no ads.

averyfalken , 5 months ago

I use eternity chase its Foss and easily available in the fdroid store

SuperSpaceFan , 5 months ago

And they are free

nezrock , 5 months ago

I use Connect for lemmy, it's really great and ad-free.

HypnoticSheep , 5 months ago

I've tried all the other popular apps, and keep coming back to Connect.
The main features that pull me back are profile-specific settings so I can set up different accounts without having to reconfigure everything every time I switch instances, and the ability to customize post card quick actions, specifically the Mark As Read quick button combined with the persistent Hide All Read toggle. It's just so convenient, I keep coming back even though it deletes my account info every time it logs me out.

itsnicodegallo , 5 months ago

Connect rarely makes it on these lists, but I think it's fantastic.

imkali , 5 months ago

Jerboa (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid)

Voyager (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid + PWA + iOS App Store)

Thunder (FOSS. Play Store + IzzyOnDroid + iOS App Store)

Eternity (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid)

edit: formatting

southernwolf , 5 months ago

10/10 for Voyager, with a shout-out to Eternity too!

Klear , 5 months ago

I need to do another round of trying everything. Currently using Liftoff and happy with it, but I should check out the alternatives anyway.

pacjo , 5 months ago

Eternity is great and there's a work in progress to add multicommunity support.

Also just like Infinity enabling amoled theme makes it look a whole lot more modern.

JustEnoughDucks , 5 months ago

The only thing it is missing for me is community search. It is great! Also the most customizable of the bunch in my opinion

soviettaters , 5 months ago

Jerboa's great

wreckedcarzz , 5 months ago

As a user of RedReader since launch a decade+ ago, I dig Thunder. Simple, no bullshit, logical settings.

Max_P , 5 months ago

The ads come from an ad network where there is very little visibility into what's going to be displayed in your app. And bad people also keep managing to get their ads published even though the ad network doesn't allow them

And it all ties into the whole targeted advertising, where they also make sure very few people get the bad ad, and tries to target people they think may be more susceptible to these kinds of tactics. Depending on the amount of interactivity allowed, the ad can even display two different things if it deems you too savvy to fall for it.

It's basically unescapable unless you only use apps without ads, or pay for the ad-free versions.

The whole advertising industry is sketchy, more news at 10.

otter , 5 months ago

Yep, also the ads don't get initialized at all if the user buys the ad-free version (going to top all in the Lemmy Boost community should bring up the post about it). It's relatively cheap and the dev is very active with bugs and requests. The dev is developing for the Fediverse and I'm happy to support that (as well as devs for Sync, Connect, Lemmy, etc.)

I like Boost and paid for ad-Free, but a lot of other clients should work for your needs. While they might not be privacy focussed, many are open source so you can check what is going on.

My preference goes

• Boost (not FOSS, one time payment to remove ads)
• Connect (not FOSS, ad free)
• Eternity (FOSS & ad free)

I uninstalled the other ones and haven't kept up with them. There may be better ones out there, these are the ones I'm keeping up with

Darkassassin07 , 5 months ago

Pi-hole blocks ads served by these networks just fine. Never seen an ad in Boost for Lemmy or for Reddit, though I tend to use Jerboa now that I've gotten used to it while I was waiting for Boost for Lemmy to release.

DNS based adblocking like Pihole or Adguard limits you to receiving advertising hosted by the app provider (youtube for example) which is usually better curated than third party advertising networks and less commonly found at all.

knobbysideup , 5 months ago

To be truly effective you must also block DoH and DoT. The first can only be done with endpoint lists, since it is https.

N0x0n , 5 months ago

Hey, could you elaborate or send some lecture? I have the upstream quad9 DoH address in adguard. It's supposed to better encrypt my traffic right? Never saw any ads or strange DNS requests.

Never heard about ads being inject though DoH or DoT, or did I misunderstood your comment?

Darkassassin07 , 5 months ago

Theoretically an app could use a custom DoH endpoint to retrieve ads instead of the standard dns provided by the system. As this uses purely https without a preceding dns request, pihole/adguard would fail to block it; but it's just not something currently employed.

waratchess , 5 months ago

Voyager

It's a FOSS privacy respecting Lemmy client.

It's available on Android and IOS

You can also try it as a PWA: https://vger.app

labbbb , 5 months ago

Another one URL I use: https://wefwef.app/

waratchess , 5 months ago

The OG

ono , 5 months ago

I start with whatever is on F-Droid, and narrow it down from there.

Jerboa was the only option there until recently. I see Voyager and Eternity are there now. I'll have to give them a try.

schizoidman , 5 months ago

Voyager is currently many versions ahead of the one listed on F-Droid. It is still usable but you may want to get the latest version from GitHub.

ono , 5 months ago

If new versions don't make it to F-Droid, they might as well not exist for me. There are only a couple of apps that I find important enough that I'll spend time manually building/pulling/installing, and a Lemmy reader isn't one of them. Thanks for the tip, though.

carzian , 5 months ago

Have you considered using
https://github.com/imranr98/obtainium
You give it the repository of the app and it will handle checking for new versions and updating them

ono , 5 months ago

Part of what I value in F-Droid is the additional layer in the build/release process, because it makes tampering more likely to be detected.

It's still nice to know a tool like obtanium exists, though. Thanks for the link.

refurbishedrefurbisher , 5 months ago

Eternity FTW

backhdlp , 5 months ago

Iirc Sync and Boost are the only proprietary clients right now, so everything else is good. I'm using Eternity right now, it's on f droid

Arin , 5 months ago

I'm using android Connect for lemmy and it's pretty good

kia , 5 months ago

The title is a little disingenuous. Claiming this is a property of the Boost app isn't correct... It's just an ad network.

golden_zealot OP , 5 months ago

I didn't make the statement that it's their property, I made the statement that it's being displayed through their application.

Neato , 5 months ago

Wait, Boost has ads? I've literally never seen an ad.

Arin , 5 months ago

have you installed anything like pihole or your own dns?

Neato , 5 months ago

Nope. Standard router and DNS.

I did pay for Boost since it was a one-time payment and I have free googlebucks.

deegeese , 5 months ago

I like Voyager a lot but it might be iOS only.

Pantherina , 5 months ago

No it is not, even though the Android app also uses that weird style

Pantherina , 5 months ago

Jerboah??

GreatBlueHeron , 5 months ago

No h on the end - just Jerboa