214
What a joke apps are turning into. (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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[–] 91 points 4 months ago* (12 children)

Probably gonna get hate for this but like... Yeah if I had the option to pay for more things and not be tracked and dataharvested, I would. The infrastructure and support isn't free. What's really shit is when they do both... The prices should be lower, like way way way lower, but middlemen all want their cuts for transactions so you'll almost never see subs for under a dollar.

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  • [–] 89 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Just because you pay a subscription to avoid ads does not mean your data is not still being harvested and sold. The big exception is now they have a payment method tied to a specific person not just an ad profile.

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  • [–] 21 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

    That has more to do with what apps you chose to use and give them your data.

    But people still don't get the basic principle "if you don't pay, you are not the customer, your are the merchandise being sold".

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    You are right but just as the original commenter said, even if you pay there is no way to be sure the app you just paid for isn't harvesting and selling your sweet sweet usage data. Like Tiktok I'd imagine would 100% do.

    I am at a point where I'd really like to support and pay for apps, even closed source ones, just so they don't show me ads or harvest my data. Open source is much better at that, of course.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    No way to be sure? It is absolutely sure that they are harvesting every bit of data they can from you.

    My wife was shocked when she googled herself and found information that could only have been obtained by reading all of her emails. I explained that Gmail and other mail services are not charities, and if you're not paying for them with money, you are paying with something else.

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    Yep. Like proton started out immediately as a secure alternative. I'd trust them. I imagine tuta and others as well.

    As for the rest (Google, meta, tiktok) I'd say there is zero chance your data would ever hope to never be harvested.

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  • [–] 30 points 4 months ago

    I mean I get where you're coming from, but imo we shouldn't have to pay to not be tracked and data harvested. You can run ads and have them not be creepy stalky, it's only greed to maxmize profits that pushes companies to go for the stalker option.

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago

    I know this is in the UK, but on this topic, in the EU, is it even legal to require to pay to avoid tracking? Tracking should require consent, but it should be non-forced, meaning, connecting the consent to some other condition, like paying, is likely not legal.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    I have YouTube premium but (besides now) I'm borderline afraid to reveal this to anyone online due to crowd mentality being fully against paying for YouTube. It's around 3.5€ per month for me as part of family plan me and bunch of friends created. Supposedly creators earn far more from premium watches than people watching ads, so that's nice to know.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    I like(d) YouTube premium. It pays significantly more to creators while removing ads and adds other paywalled features like music.

    But I stopped mine because I became more budget conscious, and because I basically stopped using the site entirely because the UX is so bad! I primarily use freetube desktop and pipepipe android, so creators weren't going to get paid for my views anyways, so I just cancelled... But ideally, if the site UX wasn't terrible and I used it as intended, I'd happily sub.

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  • [+] -6 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    And if you really trust a company that much then you deserve to lose your money AND data...

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago*

    Never said I trusted the company, just that it would be preferred if that were the case. At least with paying customers there's an incentive to be pro-consumer. If Proton was snooping on all your shit I think they'd have fewer customers. Likewise I pay for Kagi, primarily for the features and services they offer, but improved privacy is part of the sales proposition; yes they could make more profit selling customer data but that would be a pretty big reputation hit.

    Do I trust them not to? No, but "maybe they won't " is better than "they absolutely must"

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    • [–] 17 points 4 months ago*

    Yeah that happens a lot with the model most apps and platforms use. The venture capital today, figure out how to actually become profitable tomorrow. That transition is usually messy.

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    [–] 14 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Smug and proud that TikTok has never earned a dime from me

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    • [–] 12 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I can't decide if I hate TikTok or VC more

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    • [–] 11 points 4 months ago

    Yep. Not even once. Bring the web back to its roots. Fuck all these grifters.

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    [–] 11 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I don't use tiktok for reasons that would be preaching to the choir here, but pardon me for asking... Isn't everything on TikTok an ad? Like they're either telling people to buy a book, put sugary syrup in water, buy organising plastic containers, selling slime, selling ice cube trays that ironically make them no longer cubes, selling makeup, clothing hauls, generating affiliate revenue, asking people to enlist... I could go on. It's just ads all the way down? What would someone see if they removed all the #ad posts?

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    • [–] 8 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    How about no tiktok at all. It's all slop.

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    • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Meanwhile tiktok creators earn a lot less than influencers on other platforms...

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    • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Or just patch it with Morphe.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    They (Google) will eventually ban morphle developers. All is heading that way with android

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    If they touch Adb it's over for Android altogether. So they can't actually do anything.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 4 months ago* (1 child)

    What good is adb if they system is blacklisting install by this developer?
    Imo it is over for android, yes that's the point.

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  • [–] 10 points 4 months ago*

    Adb installs bypass all that, and without adb nobody could make and test android apps so they would have no apps to sell.

    That said I think looking into Linux phones is a good idea because Google are a scumbag company.

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    • [–] 3 points 4 months ago

    Join the premium brain rot plan today! Addictively doom scroll through ai slop ad free for less than 5 quid a month!

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    [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    Jfc who the fuck uses this app.

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    [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    But, tictocs are already ads. So, what's now, ads with extra ads?

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    [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    TBH, I think 50% of my wife's TT usage is finding cheap neat things on TT ads.

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    [–] 1 point 4 months ago (3 children)

    To be fair, one thing often overlooked is these things don't run in rainbows and unicorn dust. Especially a video platform. $$. To expect it completely free is kind of crazy.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    I'd be willing to devote taxes to social media without ads and featuring a non-malevolent algorithm. If it allowed people to communicate with each other like Twitter or Facebook, it would be a service to the benefit of the public.

    Once upon a time, at least here in the states, we believed in a government that served the public good.

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    • [+] 0 points 4 months ago (5 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago* (3 children)

    How does that break GDPR.

    They even allowed to charge money if you want no ad related cookies.

    Most webpages are like pay 1€/month or accept the cookies. Totally legal and within law. Another instance of EU institutions being lobbied into supporting business above people.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    It's not clear yet whether its within the law. There is multiple complaints regarding this being filed across the eu, and noyb is actively campaigning for this to be investigated. The argument is that gdpr demands the user being given a real choice. However, most sites pick the monthly fee at 4-5 €, which seems low but is actually very offputting and deliberately chosen such that most people accept cookies instead. A strong indicator for this is that a paid subscription nets the site about 3€ a month, while ad revenue per user per month is only about 0,25 €. So you would think they could offer a lot lower subscription fees. The fact that they won't means they really really want to track you and dark oattern you into accepting.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (1 child)

    Your choice is: Pay or don't use it.

    Tiktok isnt essential. Neither is Insta, FB, Telegram and so on.
    Youtube can be up for debate (it became the biggest greatest private library).

    I am totally here for taxing and fines being handed out like candy to the big social corpos but this aint it chief.

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    • [+] -7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    That's a good price 🤷‍♂️

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