I was looking forward to trying Sync today now that it’s live, but my enthusiasm was immediately dampened after seeing the “Data Safety” section on the Google Play store.

Liftoff has been great, and want to say thanks for making an awesome app. This will continue to be my daily driver.

Edit: for clarity, because the post got way bigger than I expected.

Sync looks like a fantastic app, and the dev/s should charge whatever they feel is fair for their efforts, even if that’s through the usual ads + ad tracking.

My intent was just to post here in /c/Liftoff to thank the Liftoff devs for managing to somehow offer an awesome app without any of that.

  • @AraozuEnglish
    8•1 year ago

    I think the issue is not with wether the dev collects data, its about the dev using google products, which do collect, store and sell data.

    There are alternatives to Firebase, (i think they can even be self hosted), so its something that can be improved without affecting much the development time or other aspects.

    • @[email protected]English
      7•1 year ago

      The Dev has shown countless times that he listens to his community and is willing to make changes. I mean for fucks sake he spent untold hours completely building a new UI and still made sure the old styling was available for users who prefer the classic look.

      If enough people raise a stink about Google services I’m sure he will look at alternatives.

    • Rikudou_SageEnglish
      6•1 year ago

      I mean, you can’t even install the pro version (without ads) unless you’re deep in the ass of the Google ecosystem. Someone checked and the pro version doesn’t send any tracking requests (which checks with what the developer said - the ad library is not even initialized in the pro version) so it’s not that bad for me.

      But the part where I have to have Play Services is a huge no-no for me. So with Sync I can choose a) have spying ads or b) have different spying ads.