Bob

It’s like ten thousand spoons when all you need is democracy.

No, it doesn’t. Not even the old ones, because Brother is rolling out malicious firmware updates even to older models:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31860131

If you have one of the remaining good Brother printers, make sure firmware updates are disabled.

I’m able to see any news that would be relevant as quickly as any other social media,

That’s not what I use Reddit for and that’s sadly the only Reddit (and other social media) thing today, that Lemmy mimics successfully.

I’m using Reddit mostly for the niche and special interest communities. For specific tech advice and troubleshooting. For all the stuff that once used to be home on newsgroups and bulletin boards and can now only be found in subreddits and, even worse, Discord communities.

And a lot of these smaller tech communities were super motivated to move to Lemmy, but Lemmy’s complete inability to surface anything but the most popular posts in the most popular communities (there’s still no equivalent for multireddits and there was no weighted popularity until 0.19) rapidly killed and suffocated virtually all of them.

That’s the reason why you can type “obscure technical problem Reddit” into Google and almost always get a relevant answer, while that will likely never be the case for Lemmy.

I can discuss things in communities that feel welcoming to me as a queer socialist that I could hardly find on Reddit.

I’m not saying Lemmy doesn’t have good communities, it certainly does, but once you go beyond news, politics and memes there’s neither enough content nor enough users to keep anything else alive.

Lemmy is very much a viable alternative

Oh, how I wish that were true. Alas, stats keep showing that Lemmy is not continuing to grow, on the contrary. There is close to zero activity in anything but the most main stream communities and Lemmy is only now making very, very slow and tentative steps to actually surface more niche communities after effectively burying and suffocating them in every release up to and including the current stable.

Also, isn’t that against EU laws?

Very likely, but the final verdict is still out on that one, as far as I know. There are several other services and sites that offer similar opt-out of tracking and ads for money schemes (albeit not as ludicrously expensive).

I believe that’s both against the spirit and any reasonable interpretation of the law, but I don’t think it has been fully tested in court.

“Our presidential election is not really democracy […]"

Well, duh!

Eh, that’s more likely due to the lower user-base and general activity than a genuine difference in behavior. At least I hope so, since I have seen some truly atrocious takes on Lemmy that haven’t received nearly enough downvotes.

I’m using an Ad-, Tracking- etc blocker in all my devices, so I’m not too worried about using Google or Bing when I do.

But I’m hosting my own instance of SearchXNG and that’s often simply the most powerful and flexible search engine.

Same here.

Same on Lemmy, minus the “masses” part, maybe.

Same here. It was my second favorite Reddit client (after Boost, and, for a while, Dash), but I feel he priced himself right out of the market. I’m waiting to see what Boost for Lemmy has to offer and at what cost.

I never really warmed up to Infinity for Reddit, but I’ll give it another shot. Connect and LiftOff aren’t bad either for being this early in development and Voyager just came out swinging.

A decade of development and optimization vs a couple of weeks/months.

It’s 22€ (24.50 USD) here. To the commenter who said that’s “one MacDonald,'s meal”, every single large McMenu here is under 10€. With the usual coupons, you’re looking at the cost of McDonald’s for my entire family, not just one meal.

I can still, comfortably, afford blowing that much money on an app. But it doesn’t even get me any of the many “Ultra” features (that’s 110€). Looking at the Ultra page, ljdawson has already made clear that almost all planned Lemmy quality of life features will be pay-gated.

It’s also a huge gamble: we have no idea how financially viable Sync will be in a much smaller and far more hostile to non-FOSS apps, community. Heck, I opted out of tracking (like most EU-members of Lemmy would have) and the app isn’t even loading any ads at all, the revenue generated for ljdawson is zero.

Ljdawson has already suspended development of the original Reddit client on at least one occasion even though it was massively successful. Don’t think for a second he won’t cut his losses and run if he doesn’t consider the Lemmy client a financial success. The “lifetime” purchase might buy you another 10 years of maintained and polished usage, it might buy you six months. It’s a gamble.

Instead of blowing the cost of a small (McDonald’s) or a large (Amusement Park) family outing on my second-favorite former Reddit client, I’m waiting for Boost to come out, with hopefully slightly more sensible pricing.

Boost is the one I’m looking forward to with by far the most excitement. It was my favorite Reddit client. While I’d be happy enough with Sync, it was always 2nd to Boost for me and this launch and the extremely premium pricing haven’t left me with the best first expression.

I also have the feeling that ljdawson will be the first to cut their losses if the client doesn’t perform as expected on this platform, which makes me extra hesitant to dish out for 22€ or 115€ lifetime payments.

I used several Reddit apps over the years, mostly Relay, Sync, Dash (rip) and Boost. Boost and Sync were my favorites in the end, with a slight preference for Boost (per subreddit view settings and a much better gallery view being the core reasons).

I bought them all and even subscribed to Sync Ultra several times since its inception. I’ll subscribe to Sync for Lemmy as well, at least until Boost comes out - my ad-filter is preventing the ads from loading anyway and I’ll feel better subscribing.

But I will break with my rule to purchase the ad-free version of any app if it’s available on this occasion. 22€ is simply too much to gamble on an app with an uncertain future and a flaky history. ljdawson already paused work on Sync on at least one occasion and is almost certainly going to do it again if this financial gamble isn’t working out.

Boost still works for me like nothing ever happened, NSFW posts and all. But I can’t wait for Boost for Lemmy.

Wow, you weren’t kidding. That’s literally more than 10 times what I paid for the original Sync for Reddit Pro (standalone, without the ad- and tracking framework).

That’s “I want to technically offer a one-time-payment option, but don’t want people to actually use it”-pricing, especially since it doesn’t come with any of the additional subscription features.

I just went from “cool, this will probably be my new home” to “I can’t wait to see what Boost has to offer”.

As someone who bought the premium version of pretty much every single 3rd Party Reddit client (and just about every app I use that allows for ad-removal), this might be the first one I’ll skip.

Are you planning a separate “Sync Pro” app without the app-framework? Like it used to be?

I sure hope it will, but there’s no guarantee. This is still a much smaller and quiet different audience than Reddit’s and this might not be worth the effort for ljdawson in the long run. Heck, there were times when he paused development of the Reddit client despite its far larger reach.

I’m honestly a little shocked by the amount of open hostility he got all over the Fediverse for simply offering a premium/ad-supported/closed-source-client.

I’m a little hesitant to pull the trigger on this one, 15€ is just a tad over the pain threshold for an app with an unknown future and there’s still Boost to look forward to - I’m waiting to see Boost’s pricing first.