This is a rather sensationalist headline.

Every so often software developers need to eat food and live beneath shelter.

The developer of Boost @rmayayo@lemmy.world provides a free version that's supported by ads, or you can purchase an ad free experience for a one time cost. That's been a standard business since forever.

There isn't any grand conspiracy here.

As the other comments are saying, this is made very clear when you launch the app for the first time that it is ad supported, and you can donate a small amount to get all tracking and ads removed.

Love the app and I want the dev to continue development so I paid for the ad free. Devs are people and need money to live too, you know this post was just sensationalized for your own clicks.

Yeah there is a dialogue on first launch telling you it's ad supported software and that you can pay a small fee to remove all ads. Your post here is old news about an old strategy and throughout the comments here you claim it's secretive which is false.

It's a charitable reading to say you're uninformed. I would lean more toward you wanting people to be misinformed about Boost, because as others point out, its ad support is called out in multiple ways before you use it, but you don't care. Instead, you choose to call this completely common and standard way of supporting an app "predatory" and "secret", neither of which near truth. Op, is your account the alt of the Sync dev or something?

YSK also that the paid version does not have ads or trackers

You can do a one time purchase to remove the ads and tracking you know, monetising an app without ads is hard.

OP, you suck. This has been (falsely) reported before, and every time it gets shut down as fear-mongering. I really doubt you learned of this, did any kind of source checking or just looked it up without seeing the MANY disproving replies that are always there.

I've seen this enough times, this exact post, to where I'm certain it's consciously done false sensationalist crap. There are several other posts like this about other apps and services that get posted every couple of weeks/months and just like here they always get told off for their idiocy. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a group or person doing much of it, it's the exact same every time.

What a cool service, thanks for sharing. You can also check the Exodus database via web if you can't or don't want to install the native Android app.

I've seen this kind of post about boost several times now. It's just sad that people are just maliciously uninformed. It made me want to support the dev even more. Paying for the ad free version now.

Eternity still good

There is a reason so many Lemmy apps are abandoned, they were free and free of advertising. Devs need to eat. I prefer the paid app model to support the devs as opposed to ads. The dev of boost has always been open about how ads work.

Good work bringing this to the attention of others.

I agree that Jerboa is good. If anyone wants another option, then Connect For Lemmy is clean, simple, and updated frequently. I'm nothing to do with Connect, just someone that has tried loads of Lemmy apps on Android, and has settled on Connect.

i mean, it's just ads. you're blowing this way out of proportion just because of some unintrusive ads.

devs gotta eat. if you prefer FOSS, that's great! i love FOSS software too! but boost is like home to me, even with the ads.

Voyager is the best Lemmy client on iOS or Android both, with Jerboa being a close second.

ive been on Voyager and i like it very much. is there a known better option, or my first choice was a solid? thanks

YSK that, in general, you should only ever use Android apps from F-Droid unless you've got a very good justification for doing otherwise. That's especially true for generic/basic utility apps like calculators, calendars, and file managers, classic games like solitaire or tetris, and Lemmy clients.

I guess I'm just legitimately confused about how to feel about it all. Lemmy is free, signing up on an instance is free, people are posting/creating content for free, moderators are taking care of the space for free. No one's locking in to get "fed" through the entire chain. The arguments about abandoned apps doesn't really compute since plenty paid and advertising friendly apps go under/stop developing further as well (and the entire Lemmy eco-system is free so silly points of "capitalism better"). There's also the crux of "Apps just replace a webpage", they're really not reinventing the wheel here.

But, if people prefer paid apps, if the developers want to construct the apps in that manner, have at it. I do think spreading awareness of what apps are out there is important, and how they operate (this is YSK after all). I also wouldn't spend time in my day coming into defend organizations that want to monetize on open source community projects either.

Yeah that's why I use the duckduckgo app tracking protection

Raccoon is also a great alternative for trackerless Lemmy browsing, I personally prefer it over Jerboa and Voyager.

You will only pry Boost from my phone over my cold dead hands.