I think now is a great time to remind everyone, like sync’s developer, Lemmy’s developers need to be paid too! The amount of time all the devs put into making lemmy exist, in my opinion, should be worth some of your money. If you can afford it, donating to the people who develop lemmy and/or the people keeping your home instance up will accelerate the incredible growth of lemmy!
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Y’all just seething bc others are enjoying things. This is just cringe. This is not a zero sum game. You can donate to lemmy devs/instance devs/fav. app devs and whatever else you like too.
And let’s not pretend this is new. You could see a lot of memmy users being excited about their app too. I don’t know what the hell they are talking about. But I’m glad they have an app they like that much.
Just. Let. People. Enjoy. Things.
i dont think theres anything wrong with sync enjoyers loving their app but i have to agree that the iap money would be better spent on actually keeping instances alive
This is such a bad take. By the same logic, the time you spend scrolling through Lemmy would have been better spent serving the homeless in the soup kitchen or sweeping the streets clean. But yet here you are. Why?
Let’s face it, the “IAP money” you referred to has always been there, Sync dev found a way (and has the balls) to monetize his work to a pretty big extent. And only now are you all sour grapes about it. If Lemmy instances are so desperate for money why didn’t they make an equally big effort to monetize? On the flip side, if money isn’t such a big issue why do you care if Sync is monetizing?
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The last I read, the instance was already fully-funded through the end of the year.
Why is the notion that the instance is going under something lemmings keep bringing up? Yes… I understand the model. But it is fully funded - or was. Why are people acting like the instance is about to fail?
Should we start rumors that the instance is about the fail? Or… are recent facts useful, here?
Yes, there are other instances, but the preponderance of Sync users joined lemmy.world.
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Makes sense. No one is entitled to the labor of others.
Applies here, too.
If no one else is reading this, something is fishy with votes. No… not preoccupied with the vote. Preoccupied with what it may indicate. It is, as you’ve indicated, stale.
It’s not either or. But I have now stopped donating because y’all can’t get off this topic.
Hate the super-rich, not people with enough money left over at the month that they can afford a nicer way to interact with lemmy as intended - ad free.
That the server needs people with extra cash to support it is exceedingly valid. That’s why I had been donating until literally 10 minutes ago.
I’m not subsidizing people who feel entitled to: Free shit Using free shit to tell others how they should spend (Acting like my money is theirs)
It’s a simple boundaries issue that so many on Lemmy don’t seem to comprehend.
When I stopped my donation, there was “other” then a box to say why. I filled it in. It’s just one donation that stopped, but who knows, there could be more.
I have now stopped donating because y’all can’t get off this topic.
When I stopped my donation, there was “other” then a box to say why. I filled it in. It’s just one donation that stopped, but who knows, there could be more.
You stopped supporting the server you use because some other people (on different servers) commented about another topic entirely? I don’t understand the logic behind that. Are you under the impression that someone posting from lemmy.ca is secretly the maintainer of lemmy.world? What’s the logical connection here for you?
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Thank you for asking and a thoughtful response.
I’m (hopefully obviously) not opposed to supporting lemmy.world or the devs. I don’t expect free stuff.
I have run into more than a couple people who have needed to opine and troll because they have strong feeling about people enjoying Sync.
The lemmyverse has at least one starting point and maybe I’m still learning. What I see is a place begun in a somewhat communist, left leaning, pro-FOSS standpoint. I suspect that demographic is inclined to thought processes I can’t grok.
I understand class resentment (I do; I’m not wealthy (at all)). I understand fatigue with people geeking out over an app that underwhelms a person of other tastes (or means).
That said, I see your distinction. One of the virtues of lemmy is that it’s a loose federation. But people from a variety of servers have argued in poor faith (or just not seen what they’re doing).
I expect disagreement. It’s part of why I’m here: to hear well reasoned counter points and to learn. But it’s difficult to say lemmy.world has been happy about the newcomers. That I’ve seen anyhow.
If making the point that allies are being alienated in ways that matter to us all, helps make a point that we could be friends, then I’ll make that point.
I did end my subscribed support that would have outpaced my Sync spend within a year (you can math that). Lemmy, right now, has an unwelcoming vibe that’s not even a little background. It is foreground. And problematic if this experiment is going to work.
all i said is better spent, not that you’re not allowed to spend money on sync; and you talk about it like you’re forced to pay to browse lemmy without ads when it’s sync that has ads and not lemmy?
Strange comment
I happily supported the dev. Just as I had happily supported the server.
OP mentions sync, you mention sync, I mention sync (eww thats crass), you mention sync… first line comments mention sync in frustrated tones. Are you going to lecture them too?
I know the misrepresent-and-fatigue strategy of argumentation and I’m not going to play. I’ve seen it a surprising amount here on Lemmy and you’re doing it now.
If honesty or integrity don’t mean a lot to you, I’d recommend turning over the soap box.
On topic, again: you, along with others, have persuaded me to cease donations but I don’t retreat like you may hope.
This bastian of class resentment is going to have to adapt or close. If everyone here is what I’m seeing, I hope the person running the server has deep pockets. Or I guess everyone keeps instance hopping until everyone realizes it’s not sustainable and instances aren’t spun up.
I’m not wealthy, in the least, but I don’t expect things for free. Lemmy has taught me I should. I’ll apply that to the servers and development.
Womp womp
You’re absolutely correct. Anyone can enjoy any app they like and either pay for it or not.
But coming into a thread about ways to ensure Lemmy gets the support it needs to develop and instances get the support they need to keep going to tell everyone how much you love your app is infantile.
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Here’s what OP said:
“With all this talk about Sync pricing…I think now is a great time to remind everyone, like sync’s developer, Lemmy’s developers need to be paid too! The amount of time all the devs put into making lemmy exist, in my opinion, should be worth some of your money. If you can afford it, donating to the people who develop lemmy and/or the people keeping your home instance up will accelerate the incredible growth of lemmy!”
How on Earth do you come to the conclusion that that is in any way calling Sync users out?
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I have to assume you’re referring to things I’ve said as it would be pretty stupid to expect me to be answerable for things other people have said.
So, you let me know where I’ve made any comments in the entire thread that are based on Sync being a for-profit app and my lectures about the desirability of FOSS purism and I’ll be happy to talk about them.
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Let me make a list of things that would be “stupid” to take from this.
That you are answerable for what others have said.
Then why did you ask me to justify OP’s post?
That you are among those that were prodding Sync users.
Then why did you try and make me answerable for what other people were saying?
Not whatever the fuck direction that was that you just tried to take it in.
It’s pretty simple. You said:
“because of the sync mention by the OP, there is a preponderance of lecturing coming from the FOSS purist community. It is infantile to expect no response to that”
And clearly expected me to have some sort of ownership of, or participation in, that lecturing. I then pointed out to you that I didn’t believe I had either but if you could find an example of me doing so I’d be happy to talk about it.
Feel free to tell me why my paraphrasing was inaccurate
Because it’s not what I said. I said:
“You’re absolutely correct. Anyone can enjoy any app they like and either pay for it or not…But coming into a thread about ways to ensure Lemmy gets the support it needs to develop and instances get the support they need to keep going to tell everyone how much you love your app is infantile.”
I’m not sure saying someone(s) coming into a thread which is nothing to do with Sync as a piece of software and proceeding to hijack it to be about Sync is infantile behaviour is directly equivalent to ‘standing up for yourself is infantile’. They weren’t standing up for themselves, they’d made an error in understanding what the thread was about and when informed what it was about got annoyed and asked why they ‘couldn’t just use what we want’ or ‘why do you care?’ when as far as I can tell nobody (certainly not me) told them they couldn’t use whatever app they wanted to, its simply not what this thread was about.
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I call it, “subscription fatigue”.
Work bought me an iPad. It was my first foray into iOS.
I’m not sure what the app store was like before, but I couldn’t find a single app that didn’t have a subscription plan. Even a simple SSH client built using open source libraries wants $6.00/mo.
I totally understand why people groan and do a face palm any time they see yet another app wanting to charge them monthly, hoping that once there you’ll forget that you’ve subscribed.
The only reason that I paid for Sync is that I’ve seen the dev interactions and their dedication to the project. I would never ever pay for a software subscription from any of the big players. For a single person setup, I’m more than happy to do it. I donate to my favorite podcasts and my favorite designers from Thingiverse.
Late stage capitalism and the rent-seeking economy sucks. But becoming accustomed to individuals paying other individuals is one of the things we’re going to have to do to make it suck less.
From the developer’s point of view, subscription makes more sense as people benefit from continual development and updates, and the dev continually gets paid for their time.
I paid $1 or $2 for sync pro like 9 years ago and back then, it took a lot to get me to pay for apps. The more I use the app, the more I got for my money per hour spent using the all. But the more work the dev did after he got my money, the less he gets paid for his labor, per hour.
Nowadays, $1-2 feels like a steal for an app, especially for a one time payment. I haven’t paid for ad-free or ultra yet, but I intend to because he’s shown a long history of listening to his user base and updating/fixing things in a timely manner, which that type of service also is something I value as a customer, even if it isn’t a tangible benefit.
I’m one of those with subscription fatigue but that’s not a problem with sync because you don’t have to subscribe. You can just pay the one time ad-free option and that’s all right with me. I honestly don’t know what’s going on with the vitriol against sync on lemmy. I think most people don’t realise that nobody needs to subscribe to sync, you can use it for free with ads OR you pay the one time fee and have it ads free forever without the other subscription features.
Termius?
I might pay for their subscription if it was like $2 a year. Cloud sync is not worth $120 a year.
I only really need it when I’m transferring devices. Oddly enough, they also seem to give you a free one week trial whenever you do so.
I get that they’re targeting enterprise customers, but they could just charge a smaller fee for individuals and go hard on companies who are skirting the rules.
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I don’t subscribe as a rule these days.Subscription fatigue is a real thing but I do make one time payments to regularly used services or apps across the year. I guess it’s like tipping in that respect, I do it when I feel I should.
For Sync, the subscription seemed steep for an app for a platform I’m still only starting to use and don’t use anywhere near Reddit levels (by design I might add) plus the one time payment seems similarly steep. I bought the pro for Reddit about 2 years before Reddit went full ham and was ready to spend the £8 of Google credit I have on it again if it turned out I used it/lemmy more than I do.
The issue I found is that feeding that back on anything like this hit the cult wall and you just get a lot of angry posting about you being cheap or just use the ads etc. Hell, you can see the same posts even in this thread which is only tangentially related to that whole quagmire. I had hoped that lemmy would be less vitriolic and more discussion based even on these kinds of things but I guess people are just tribalistic regardless.
I agree that subscription fatigue is a huge thing, and I avoid services as a rule of thumb unless there are real reasons for the subscription, ie ongoing usage based costs.
That said, I view $2 a month as a reasonable subscription cost, and if Reddit had charged that I would have happily paid it to keep bacon reader. It’s only the one time payment cost that is very steep ($99).
I chip in $5/mo for lemmy.world to help pay to keep it ad free and running
Yeah i think cult mentality is the problem. If someone doesn’t want to pay or cannot pay, it’s their choice/circumstances. If they don’t like sync’s pricing and wanna stick to FOSS apps, it’s their choice. I don’t like to see people pushing around others for their choice of what they think is the best.
Good bloody grief! How did a reminder to support Lemmy devs and hosts get hijacked by Sync fans? Sync is a completely different topic.
Yeah, maybe shouldn’t have mentioned sync in my post. I was just doing as a joke though.
It’s a fine segue. I’m just surprised at how many people jumped at the chance to talk about a different topic and ignore your actual message.
Thanks for the reminder, BTW. As soon as I find a permanent home, I’ll add them to the donations list.
Wait wait, what is segue ?? 😂 in my language it means “a wanking session” lmao
LOL! That’s… disturbing… in this case. Funny image, though. And perhaps appropriate given how excited Sync makes some of its users. ;>
It means a smooth transition from one thing to another. In this case, using Sync to introduce the discussion about supporting devs and instances.
It means transition in English 😅
Pronounced the same as Segway. link to hear it
Thanks TIL
What a peculiar coincidence…
You are? It’s quite the hot topic right now.
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Sync users are annoyed getting blasted with FOSS this and that. Other client users do not need to ridicule Sync fans. Or behave like houlier than thou and teach Sync users how to spend rheir money.
They are free to stay closed-source proprietary but prople have the right to voice their opinions.
That is not holier than thou.
The title literally references Sync…if it didn’t, your point would be stronger but I understand the spirit.
It does, but only as a contrast to point out that others in the ecosystem also deserve support. OP’s post is literally a reminder that, without devs and hosts, Sync would have no reason to exist. It’s about the devs and hosts.
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It appears to be hijacked by FOSS fans from what I see.
All I know is I’m already sick of this anti-FOSS users narrative.
I don’t even get how someone can be anti-foss. I feel like it’s a necessity until a critical mass adopts the platform.
We must be looking at different threads, unless Sync is FOSS.
Yeah. If you got 100$ to spare you should be giving it lemmy instead of sync.
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The difference is that some users have been using sync for a decade and using Lemmy for only a month. So it’s a lot easier to mentally justify supporting a developer who you’ve been benefiting from for so long.
I have also donated to my local instance, I really hope to see it all grow together.
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Reddit has benefitted from Sync, and other 3rd party apps, way more than Sync has benefitted from Reddit.
It’s less clear cut with Lemmy, which is supposed to evolve an ecosystem of free tools, so it might be that some day Sync will be benefitting from Lemmy more than Lemmy from Sync… but for now, Lemmy is relatively bare bones, like what Reddit used to be 15 years ago, so any 3rd party app with extra features is still a good thing.
Fortunately, Lemmy has no incentive to go closed source, like Reddit did (let’s not forget Reddit used to be open source while it was convenient for them, then it wasn’t).
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Sync is $20 to remove ads no? Where is it $100?
Update: nevermind I see it here for sync ultra
The 100$ is very much a premium tier with nice to have features. The ad free version is around 20$, which is still steep but you’re paying for lifetime ads.
you’re paying for lifetime ads
You don’t need to pay for that, just go to Reddit. Free unlimited lifetime ads! 😉
Personally, I think the app is absolutely fine without paying for the subscription. I really don’t see too many ads. I get an average of one ad for every two refreshes of the feed when scrolling through, and none of them have been obtrusive. It’s certainly night and day when compared to the ads in the official Reddit app.
I’m not seeing many ads tbh. However, I’m damn sure that it’ll be ad-filled after sometime, specially since they are charging so much for the ad-free.
I mean it’s just a port of the Reddit version that was made by the same dev and had been around for over a decade (with constant updates and improvements), I don’t think enshittification is a given.
Well, compared to Reddit getting filled with “ad looking like real post”, and “ad written as a comment”, and “mass downvote everyone except the ad”… it’s really hard to stoop that low.
What is likely to keep Sync in check, are the alternative apps. Reddit got enshittified because it became the single point of failure.
I don’t think it’s a given and the dev has a proven track record.
…buuuuuutttt they did move to a much smaller userbase so I wonder how many ads he will need for sustainability.
Depends on if their business model works. If enough people are paying for premium and using the free version of the app to pay for development, there is no reason for them to increase the amount of ads. In fact, if they do show too many ads, it will likely push a lot of users to alternate apps.
The ads weren’t terrible on the free Reddit version, they’re just inline ads between posts.
There may have been a banner on some galleries but I’m not sure if that’s carried over also.
I run all my traffic through a slightly anonymizing VPN service that also blocks ads. Turns out the ads here are also blocked 🥳
Same. I have a PiHole on my home network and it blocks the ads in Sync. I still see the empty box where the ad would be though. If I am out of the house the only way I can get that ad blocking back is by connecting to my home VPN server.
In my experience, AdGuard has a more useful (free for home use) server that mirrors the pihole service. It’s more customizable, and this bit is probably the key here, and you can have different rules for different devices/network numbers
I can make different rules based on the device group with PiHole.
The people who develop lemmy get paid to do so, as stated by iirc Dessalines themselves.
I would put donating to those running instances at the highest priority, because without servers, we have nothing.
That grant is coming to an end, if it hasn’t already.
They get paid from an NLnet grant, but it’s only for specific features (not bug fixing) and it’s not a living wage
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It’s more than €10 unless it’s on a raspberry pi. Lemmy.world is over €100
Lemmy.world is over €100
from just the memory numbers last time i saw server graphs, it’s gotta be at least an order of magnitude more than that.
Iirc it was €180 about for the EPYC host. That was months ago but it had headroom.
How to prevent it from becoming a Wikipedia situation then with server owners begging for money constantly?
Accept the instance owners will be forced to turn to shittier methods of income, like ads.
Spreading the load over many small instances will likely prevent this. It can be quite cheap to host lemmy well, but everything is expensive when you scale up 1000x
This is my biggest problem with it. I have no issue with Sync charging. I have an issue with Sync charging and not passing anything on to the developers of Lemmy.
I think lemmy instances should be able to charge for API acce… wait a minute
There’s nothing wrong with charging for API access if the price is reasonable. Reddit was intentionally unreasonable to kill off 3rd party traffic. In 2022, the avg reddit user brought in $0.72 USD per year. If they charged just $1/yr, they’d increase their profit!
Hell, I would even dare say, the best way to do it is to have the API be free up to a certain usage, at which point it becomes paid. Then the price scales down as you get even more and more usage.
This allows newcomers to the app space to get their footing, and punishes people trying to automate vote bots while rewarding established devs.
Yes I know, it was just pretty funny that the first comment I saw was about a paid 3rd party app not paying for access, when this was one of reddit’s “official” reasons for the changes.
Exactly, this is something I see people not talk about as much. Charging for API access is not new and actually reasonable. Handling API calls costs money after all. The issue was the intentionally ridiculous price.
If it’s a reasonable price that would be fine 🙂
a reasonable price that’s not foisted without notice? who makes such reasoned business decisions?
“because twitter did it” Spez’s stupid ass thought he should follow suit. idiot’s dumber than a bag of hammers.
Ha, touché. But the difference is that Reddit was already monetized via ads, while Lemmy is not.
My instance’s owner has a Patreon. I give there. I definitely recommend that others do the same.
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Is it just me or does Sync’s pricing seem… Exorbitantly high?
It is. The Lemmy instance owners and the devs aren’t even making a dime off the platform.
That said, the decision to pay is still ultimately up to the user. If you feel it’s too pricey, then there’s Liftoff, which is a perfectly fine app in itself. Others are okay with it or even better if regional pricing is launched.
I’m currently running infinity, seems OK… There’s still a handful of features I’d like.
I am definitely not going to run Sync with adverts and I’m not paying the amount they’re asking, neither am I going to go with subscription based.
If sync halved their ad free version, I’d probably pull the trigger - failing that, I’ll eventually just hack up their client and remove the ads myself.
Instead of hacking Sync to remove the ads, why not spend the same time helping with a free app to add the features you want?
I don’t have free time to start a project like that, removing ads from an apk is trivial.
There are plenty of FOSS apps for Lemmy out there, no need to “start” any project, just lend a hand
Nah… I don’t think that’s for me 👍
Exorbitant is the right word. A subscription model for a UI enhancement app is pretty ridiculous no matter what the price. Likewise, $20 to remove ads is absurd. A much more reasonable approach would be to charge upgrade fees to pay the dev for continued development as Lemmy evolves.
By contrast Tasker, an app that provides serious Android customization & script capabilities that enable users to enhance their entire Android experience, costs just $3.50.
As a long time Sync for Reddit user I planned to buy the Sync for Lemmy app but noped on out of there when I saw the pricing.
IMO the dev is trying to quickly replace his lost Sync for Reddit revenue before the Lemmy user base has grown enough to make that possible with reasonable pricing. Good for him that many of you are willing to pay what he’s asking, but I’ll be sticking with some of the other excellent apps available right now.
Infinity for Lemmy works really well despite its early development status: https://codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/Infinity-For-Lemmy/releases
Based on the other comments, I definitely don’t think you’re alone.
Plus dev seems deaf to the feedback.
The person that runs my home instance appears to be from Ohio, I don’t think I can sanction that buffoonery. /s
I’ll kick some money towards them once I get bills for the month sorted.
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Found the Michigander, unless there are other states that also like to banter toward Ohio.
/fellow Michigander
Iowa actually, Ohio banter is becoming somewhat universal I think. A different flavor of the Florida man meme.
I’m new to lemmy. What’s a home instance?
Sync is making it so I don’t need to think think hard. Makes head go ouchie.
It’s like email, I have yahoo, you have gmail, your grandma has aol. Each is their “home” instance but they can all talk to each other. They’re not in a walled garden and can only talk to themselves like whatsapp or reddit or twitter etc. Fediverse is an open platform and lemmy is a reddit-like part of it. Mastodon is a twitter-like part of it. Sync does do a great job, no need to make head go ouchie.
Much thanks. Me smart!
I’m new here also but I think it’s the instance where you registered your account in. For example lemmy.world.
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Registered your account in, yes, but more importantly - which home instance you’re logged into at that particular moment.
I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it threw me off how short the donation list over $10 is and how many people donate on Patreon (obviously not the only way to donate). Thanks for the donation information!
Because people are cheap and don’t like paying for online stuff. Then they complain about ads. How do people think this stuff works fairy dust and unicorn farts.
I don’t think it’s fair to call people cheap when I’m constantly seeing stuff about how much people are struggling financially. If people had more money to spare they’d care less about throwing it at random things.
I dunno, paying less than $10 is more than enough, definitely more than you could make from ads per person. And the reality is that not many people can afford to throw $10+ on every single online service.
If anything, it might be doable if you could pay, say, $50 and distribute that between everything based on your usage. But then service providers don’t really want that either, they’d rather take all that just for themselves than share with others.
Yeah that sounds about right.
I haven’t looked too deeply into the financing (recent migrant from Reddit). But would like to find out more.
Is Lemmy / Fediverse run like the Wikimedia Foundation?
Is current financing supporting the paid work and growth of servers etc?
What is considered a fair regular donation? Should I donate to Iemmy.org and the instance I have joined - lemmy.world? I would be happy to know what others here are contributing.
Thanks!
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Thanks for the links and info! How much are people donating on average?
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