this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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I'm liking sync, but would like it to be free software
This is why Sync mentions get downvoted a lot. Other options have most or all of its features, but none bring ads to Lemmy.
I'd argue that most of the userbase would rather not normalize ads on Lemmy.
While I agree, I think sync takes the award for most non intrusive ads in an app. I don't think I've seen a free ad supported app with less intrusive ads.
I've heard that argument before too -- but again, no other Lemmy app uses ads. Having them is pretty damn intrusive when the alternative is simply not having them.
Of course, it's the dev's prerogative to sell a closed-source product, and their choice to be paid for it. I support that. But the issue gets deeper since Lemmy is ultimately FOSS. Lemmy needs donations to survive. I'd wager that most folks who paid to remove ads from Sync aren't paying their instance for their bandwidth, so it ends up being an unnecessary stumbling block for the platform.
I'm all for paying devs for their work, but I am still finding the pricing for the lemmy version of sync just too high. The ad free purchase is 4 times more than it was for the reddit app. And I get that there are probably less users so he needs to make up the difference, but there's also way less content on lemmy than there was on Reddit, impacting the value there in my opinion.