The ads come from an ad network where there is very little visibility into what’s going to be displayed in your app. And bad people also keep managing to get their ads published even though the ad network doesn’t allow them
And it all ties into the whole targeted advertising, where they also make sure very few people get the bad ad, and tries to target people they think may be more susceptible to these kinds of tactics. Depending on the amount of interactivity allowed, the ad can even display two different things if it deems you too savvy to fall for it.
It’s basically unescapable unless you only use apps without ads, or pay for the ad-free versions.
The whole advertising industry is sketchy, more news at 10.
Pi-hole blocks ads served by these networks just fine. Never seen an ad in Boost for Lemmy or for Reddit, though I tend to use Jerboa now that I’ve gotten used to it while I was waiting for Boost for Lemmy to release.
DNS based adblocking like Pihole or Adguard limits you to receiving advertising hosted by the app provider (youtube for example) which is usually better curated than third party advertising networks and less commonly found at all.
Yep, also the ads don’t get initialized at all if the user buys the ad-free version (going to top all in the Lemmy Boost community should bring up the post about it). It’s relatively cheap and the dev is very active with bugs and requests. The dev is developing for the Fediverse and I’m happy to support that (as well as devs for Sync, Connect, Lemmy, etc.)
I like Boost and paid for ad-Free, but a lot of other clients should work for your needs. While they might not be privacy focussed, many are open source so you can check what is going on.
My preference goes
- Boost (not FOSS, one time payment to remove ads)
- Connect (not FOSS, ad free)
- Eternity (FOSS & ad free)
I uninstalled the other ones and haven’t kept up with them. There may be better ones out there, these are the ones I’m keeping up with
Dns adblocking blocks these 100%
Jerboa (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid)
Voyager (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid + PWA + iOS App Store)
Thunder (FOSS. Play Store + IzzyOnDroid + iOS App Store)
Eternity (FOSS. Play Store + F-Droid)
edit: formatting
10/10 for Voyager, with a shout-out to Eternity too!
I need to do another round of trying everything. Currently using Liftoff and happy with it, but I should check out the alternatives anyway.
Eternity is great and there’s a work in progress to add multicommunity support.
Also just like Infinity enabling amoled theme makes it look a whole lot more modern.
As a user of RedReader since launch a decade+ ago, I dig Thunder. Simple, no bullshit, logical settings.
Jerboa’s great
Please. For the love of god, NEVER use a proprietary app to use a piece of FOSS software. I think it’s kind of sad that we have this amazing FOSS social network and people use fucking proprietary software to use it.
Open-source it a better interface then.
Until it’s as useful as at least Sync for Lemmy, people will use 3rd party proprietary apps
I mean isn’t Lemmy licensed under the AGPL? I’m just asking because AFAIK a proprietary client is not even allowed under this license.
Indeed.
i use sync. there’s nothing even close to the quality of the client. (The onlt client that implements material you in a fun and usable way, sync is usable one-handed)
I had been using Liftoff for a while (before switching to Sync as soon as it came out), which i quite liked but it feels a lot worse than sync
I start with whatever is on F-Droid, and narrow it down from there.
Jerboa was the only option there until recently. I see Voyager and Eternity are there now. I’ll have to give them a try.
Voyager is currently many versions ahead of the one listed on F-Droid. It is still usable but you may want to get the latest version from GitHub.
If new versions don’t make it to F-Droid, they might as well not exist for me. There are only a couple of apps that I find important enough that I’ll spend time manually building/pulling/installing, and a Lemmy reader isn’t one of them. Thanks for the tip, though.
Have you considered using https://github.com/imranr98/obtainium You give it the repository of the app and it will handle checking for new versions and updating them
Part of what I value in F-Droid is the additional layer in the build/release process, because it makes tampering more likely to be detected.
It’s still nice to know a tool like obtanium exists, though. Thanks for the link.
This is exactly the reason why I don’t like F-Droid as a way to get apps. You’ll have to trust an additional party when getting your apps, and updates are often a couple days behind. I prefer to get it straight from the developer’s GitHub or Coderberg or whatever.
You’ll have to trust an additional party when getting your apps, and updates are often a couple days behind.
I know how it works, and in this case, that’s fine with me.
F-Droid has an excellent track record; better than many developers have. And I’m not addicted to having the latest versions of everything on the day they’re released. In fact, not immediately jumping on the latest versions has saved me from nasty bugs more than once.
Part of what I value in F-Droid is the additional layer in the build/release process, because it makes tampering more likely to be detected.
Barely and not really. “F-Droid can’t ensure the apps are safe. You still need to trust the upstream developers. We only do some basic check.” https://forum.f-droid.org/t/is-it-as-safe-as-it-is-from-fdroid-official-repo/15956/2
N + 1 > N
N + X - Y ? N
Except now you’re adding an additional party to trust (the -Y). So it could still be considered less secure than N.
thunder is awesome too
I’m not sure why people insist on F-Droid, considering the F-Droid Security Issues.
I use it because, contrary to what that scare piece you linked would have the reader believe, it’s better for my needs than the alternatives.
(I’m no stranger to software development and security, by the way. I understand the pros and cons.)
that scare piece you linked would have the reader believe
So an indepth and critical analysis of something is now a “scare piece?” Ok.
This is why ad blockers should always be used. Small devs don’t have relationships with advertisers or control over what ad networks will do.
Or you can pay once and be done with them. I think the price of a burger is not a big ask for something you use every day.
I do both.
Eternity is great! free, no ads, and no lag while scrolling. it also supports swipe to go back from posts.
I’m so used to navigating in Eternity at this point that all other apps seem clunky and unintuitive
I use Connect for lemmy, it’s really great and ad-free.
I’ve tried all the other popular apps, and keep coming back to Connect.
The main features that pull me back are profile-specific settings so I can set up different accounts without having to reconfigure everything every time I switch instances, and the ability to customize post card quick actions, specifically the Mark As Read quick button combined with the persistent Hide All Read toggle. It’s just so convenient, I keep coming back even though it deletes my account info every time it logs me out.Connect rarely makes it on these lists, but I think it’s fantastic.
voyager is great, progressive web app, or in your favorite app store.
I am using vger right now, in firefox. I also use the web app without a download on my phone, as does my husband. Voyager is amazing.
- Voyager for Lemmy
- NextDNS to kill basically all 3rd party ad networks and tracking
Jerboa
Thunder gets regular updates and is open source and ad free.
Second this. Thunder has been great
Maybe I’m behind on my terms but does this count as a dark pattern?
It was my understanding that dark patterns are a thing designed to use a service in a way that they wouldn’t normally intend to, like renew a subscription or leave privacy options to the benefit of the company instead of the user.
This just seems like a scam, or at best highly deceptive advertising? Like, for it to be a dark pattern it would have to actually be able to send you to some android update system, but it almost certainly isn’t ever going to do that.
I suppose that is correct per the definition, thanks for the correction.
Jerboa works well
Does it? I moved to Boost because I can’t load past one page in Jerboa when viewing a community.
Yep, It work pretty well. Only Lemmy client I ever use
I recall that was a bug for a couple days and only on some sort modes when some instances upgraded to v19 and were shitting errors everywhere. All fixed now
Eternity. It was a FOSS Reddit client before the API stuff but they became a Lemmy client.
Maybe pedantic, but it’s a totally different developer that took the Infinity for Reddit source code and forked it into Eternity for Lemmy. The Infinity dev was not interested.
DNS adblocking. I don’t see those ads.
Unfortunately this break LTE internet.
What phone? Never had an issue with private DNS on Android. Unfortunately IOS requires it setup on every connection, but works.
https://adguard-dns.io/en/public-dns.html
https://youtu.be/ovqRt_qGV7c?si=iMxKS_tMMyKJV6ie
Make sure you restart the app after applying settings, should pickup new DNS and poof, 95% of ads are gone instantly.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/ovqRt_qGV7c?si=iMxKS_tMMyKJV6ie
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It’s on a Fairphone 3 on Android 13. On Wi-Fi Private DNS works perfectly, but as soon as I switch to 4G the internet connection don’t work anymore. As soon as I reset the private DNS to default it works as intended again. That’s seems to be a carrier issue.
I’m using Blokada. Would you consider Adguard to be better? And if so could you explain why? I’m not sure I see the difference.
It should not. Some phones don’t play well with private DNS though, mostly entry level ones that thrives on spying.
