We've just dealt enough with computers to know that this never ends well. The dev has a financial interest of tracking as much as possible and no reason to not do so, because as a user, you cannot check what is being tracked.

I'm 100% on board with giving users the choice to provide data in exchange for services. But that choice requires full transparency with how much of your data you're paying and who gets access to it.

[–] drekly@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But they're not his trackers, he just enabled ads. And ads happen to have trackers built in.

And I think the reason everyone is so angry is BECAUSE it's completely transparent and lets you know exactly what the ad services are tracking, which scares the FOSS crowd.

Either way, I paid $20, have no trackers for life, and a really good app.

[–] Knusper@feddit.de 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Right, I understand that you don't care to deepen the conversation on Sync, but in the interest of mutual understanding, I'd like to point out how different our perspectives are.

I'm not scared of it being completely transparent – to be honest, I have not informed myself about Sync's policies at all – because I consider it virtually impossible to create this transparency.

I'm a software engineer, this is how I think about our field:

Companies will lose track of their data, even if they've created that data themselves.
Software engineers are put under constant pressure to deliver features with security measures usually not being a requirement.
Data processing pipelines frequently exceed the complexity that a single human can keep in their head. If those ads are from Google, it does so thousandfold.
Chances are, this data is being correlated by AI. Literally no one knows, how a specific AI system makes correlations.

All of these aspects can have an impact on user privacy. If there's not a single person in a given company who has transparency on all of this, it's just not a thing that a user will have this transparency.

[–] drekly@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

But the app is on android. A Google ecosystem, downloaded from the Google play store, displaying Google ads.

You're already Google's bitch before you download the app, so complaining about how a small, solo, full time developer is trying to monetise his creation using google ads just seems a little pedantic.

If you don't like the ads, pay for the service or don't use it at all. Personally I was happy to pay for the service, but for some reason people are still angry at the developer.

[–] Ducks@ducks.dev 1 points 1 year ago

The dev is not tracking anything. Google ads is.. and like the other comment said if you have Google Play on an android phone then you're being tracked.

I'd wager most people complaining about sync also have a Gmail account or shop on Amazon, or watch YouTube, or a million other equally or more invasive stuff.