[HN Gopher] Sync for Lemmy
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Sync for Lemmy
Author : sbt567
Score : 192 points
Date : 2023-08-06 09:23 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (play.google.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (play.google.com)
| 0x6c6f6c wrote:
| The "Everything across the known Fediverse" option is pretty
| awesome. I was worried about the UX of searching and adding
| instances so this is an interesting take. I'll have to try it out
| 0x6c6f6c wrote:
| I think we just killed lemmy.world
| lupanaro wrote:
| There is also Infinity for Lemmy. Feels like home...
| https://codeberg.org/Bazsalanszky/Infinity-For-Lemmy
| izzydata wrote:
| I'm going to have to give this one a huge thumbs down. Injecting
| ads into a free and open source webapp that previously did not
| have any just to get people to buy your ad free version is the
| kind of thing Lemmy is trying to get away from. This is quite
| unacceptable in my opinion. If the developer removes the ad-
| ridden version and only makes a single purchase paid version then
| it would be acceptable as you would be buying the software rather
| than paying them to escape the ads that they themselves added.
|
| As it stands the developer of Sync is basically profiting off of
| the free content of others by injecting ads next to all of their
| posts and comments.
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| so you're saying app developers should create apps for free,
| out of the goodness of their heart while they live in a van
| because they work for free?
| izzydata wrote:
| I didn't say any such thing. I said they should sell the
| software rather than put in ads and then get people to pay to
| remove them.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| I actually agree with you on this (having ads in a
| community full of supporters of open source and anti-
| capitalism is a bad idea), but I think the dev has already
| run the number and decides going with ad-supported model
| and $20 permanent ad-removal IAP is the only way to make
| enough profit to sustain full-time development given
| (currently) low number of lemmy users right now (100,000
| active users is too small market to profitably sell $3
| apps). I subscribed to sync ultra to support the dev, and
| hopefully if the dev is able to sustain himself from
| subscriptions, he might be more open to removing ads in the
| free version later.
| danielbln wrote:
| What are you on about? Sync is a native app that uses the Lemmy
| API, not some webapp wrapper. And the original version also
| features ads unless you bought the pro version.
| izzydata wrote:
| No other Lemmy UI whether it be a webapp or mobile app has
| ads. This is exclusive to Sync.
| d0gbread wrote:
| Curious how you would prefer this be resolved? Or are you just
| saying you would have made different decisions and it's fine
| that Sync is doing what Sync is doing?
| izzydata wrote:
| Simple. You get rid of the free with ads version and then
| sell the software for whatever amount of money. Or if there
| has to be a free version it wouldn't have ads. It would just
| not have the pro features which you would have to pay for.
|
| Ads are not a necessary business model.
| d0gbread wrote:
| I understand that is an option, but the way you say he's
| profiting off free content made it sound like it should be
| someone's choice other than the developers to dictate how
| he should or shouldn't monetize. But given your response
| now I'm thinking you mean you just wouldn't pick it.
|
| The fact many people would, that Lemmy isn't affected one
| way or another, etc, makes it seem more like preference
| than morals or something. Just getting a lay of the land of
| the hate Sync is getting (on Lemmy, too).
|
| It comes across as "we don't profit [like that/at all] so
| you shouldn't either". But as someone that doesn't see it
| as unethical, I just see user choice, and in this one case
| a paid plan subsidized by users that don't mind the ads.
| jadbox wrote:
| What does "Sync for Lemmy" do exactly.. there's no app
| description.
| wccrawford wrote:
| Also, the reason that people are excited about it is because
| they really liked Sync for Reddit, and have been anxiously
| awaiting the Lemmy version that was promised.
| Tajnymag wrote:
| It's a 3rd party mobile client for the social network Lemmy.
| olig15 wrote:
| There's also 'wefwef' which is a SPA that's highly based on the
| look and feel of Apollo for Reddit on iOS - https://wefwef.app/
|
| I think they did a pretty good job with making it feel like an
| app, rather than a web page. If you add it to your Home Screen on
| iOS it's imperceptible to an app and fixes safari lagging when
| you swipe back a page.
| danielbln wrote:
| I believe it's called Voyager these days. https://vger.app
| mcjiggerlog wrote:
| Thunder [1] is also worth checking out. IMO its UI is even
| slicker than Sync's, plus it's open source and not ad-
| supported/freemium. If you ever used Relay for Reddit, you'll
| feel right at home.
|
| [1] https://github.com/thunder-app/thunder
| gremlinsinc wrote:
| ooh, I love relay! thx!
| rsolva wrote:
| Thanks for the heads up, i grabbed it from F-droid. Really nice
| app, much better than the other open source ones I have tried!
| d0gbread wrote:
| Seconded Thunder. Sync will be my home but Thunder has been my
| hold over and has been very, very good.
| heelix wrote:
| For those of use who are old reddit fans, https://old.lemmy.world
| was exists and is close enough.
| Figs wrote:
| I hope they fix the bad Cloudflare configuration -- every non-
| local username and community is incorrectly displayed as
| "[email protected]" for me since they didn't turn off
| Cloudflare's idiotic email address obfuscation setting.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Oh my god, that's a beautiful sight.
| heyoni wrote:
| Yep. I am so glad this is happening because hopefully it
| means this is also the last time. RIP Digg and Reddit.
| paulcole wrote:
| > hopefully it means this is also the last time
|
| What would make you think(or even hope) this is true?
|
| Until users are made to pay (ideally with dollars and not
| with attention) for a service like
| Reddit/Digg/Lemmy/whatever, these services are going to
| keep going away.
|
| Eventually there are bills to be paid and/or people who
| want to be paid.
| danielbln wrote:
| Instances might go away, but not the Fediverse itself.
| See IRC, email and so on.
| paulcole wrote:
| But that's like saying Gmail can go away but email itself
| lives on.
|
| Technically true but the Gmail users are gonna be pissed.
| heyoni wrote:
| Still a step forward. Right now Reddit is like facebook
| messenger, doesn't interact with anything. If it goes
| away, it's 100% gone. If your phone carrier disappears,
| you might have to change your number but you could still
| text anyone in your phonebook.
| neurostimulant wrote:
| At least when an instance is gone, their contents are
| still exist in the federated instances. The problem is
| those contents are now detached from the fediverse at
| large. Would be nice if there is a way to mark one of the
| federated instance as the new home for those contents to
| restart federation again.
| guerrilla wrote:
| > Until users are made to pay (ideally with dollars and
| not with attention) for a service like
| Reddit/Digg/Lemmy/whatever, these services are going to
| keep going away.
|
| Nobody needs to be "made" to pay. There are many
| different models already for running Mastodon servers.
| Some are cooperatives, some are crowdfunded, some have
| premium content, some are literal non-profit charities,
| some are parts of bigger businesses that do anything. You
| can't have done any research into this before you made
| your comment or else you'd know that.
| heyoni wrote:
| The fact that no one is really in control. I donate to my
| mastodon instance knowing that if it takes a turn for the
| worst, I can just go somewhere else and donate there.
| It's not flawless but at least no one is holding all the
| cards.
| v64 wrote:
| FYI, this frontend is available at https://mlmym.org/ and can
| be used with any lemmy site, not just lemmy.world, source is at
| https://github.com/rystaf/mlmym
| unshavedyak wrote:
| Anyone know if Sync has (or plans to have) an iOS version? Also
| boy that word is difficult to search for.
| selflock wrote:
| I'd like to see Apollo for Lemmy
| stiltzkin wrote:
| That's Voyager, you can test right away as PWA on
| m.lemmy.world or native app.
| darknavi wrote:
| There are a few Apollo-likes for iOS. One I contribute to is
| Mlem:
|
| https://github.com/mlemgroup/mlem
| leshenka wrote:
| If major 3rd party Reddit client developers adapt and repurpose
| their apps for Lemmy backends, can it drive significant user base
| there?
| cbarrick wrote:
| I think so.
|
| The entire reason I'm on Lemmy is because of Sync.
| danielbln wrote:
| Sync has been my mobile Reddit driver for over a decade and when
| Reddit dialed its enshitification to eleven and banned third
| party clients I immediately jumped over to Lemmy, but the
| available clients weren't quite up to snuff. Good for how new
| they were (e.g. Voyager) but Sync is a very mature app.
|
| Having Sync for Lenny has been great so far, it feels like a
| lesser populated Reddit, for all intents and purposes, and I have
| zero need to go back to Reddit at this point.
|
| I see this as a win for the Fediverse, and there are plenty of
| open source Lemmy clients out there for those who don't quite gel
| with the closed source nature of Sync.
| 7ewis wrote:
| I've tried moving to Lemmy, but as you've said it's less
| populated, significantly less from what I've seen. Almost to
| its detriment.
|
| What makes Reddit great is the niche smaller communities and
| the historical data they have (despite the search being awful).
| Lemmy sadly doesn't have this, small and even some big
| communities aren't there - wallstreetbets for example. Even
| subs with 100k+ users have low hundreds of members on Lemmy.
| kramerger wrote:
| Well, speaking from experience... most people are waiting for
| a client that doesn't suck before moving away from reddit.
| corrigible wrote:
| I've jumped completely over to lemmy and am mulling writing
| a bot to replicate external content to my instance (from
| e.g., unmigrated subreddits);
|
| the UX is fantastic though, tons of original content with
| almost zero spam. scaling the network seems hard as every
| event is a POST request (lol) but the community will
| persevere and overcome this imo
| rglullis wrote:
| Did you look into https://lemmit.online?
| mdaniel wrote:
| I would encourage you to post that as a separate
| submission, since I have so many questions
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=lemmit.online
| shows nothing)
| corrigible wrote:
| oh wow, thanks for this!
| d0gbread wrote:
| My experience also.
|
| To your last paragraph, I don't quite gel with the open source
| nature of so much of the ecosystem. The core framework being
| open source makes a lot of sense to me, but the instances being
| essentially volunteers makes me nervous about future burnout
| and lack of longevity.
|
| I'm not saying one way is right or wrong, just that it's
| something I'm watching and forming opinions around, and current
| state given the number of times Sync can't do something because
| an API call fails, it makes me wonder if a small subscription
| to the instance wouldn't be the worst thing.
|
| If an instance (Mastodon, Lemmy, whatever) was run by a
| business and came as part of a paywall subscription to say, The
| Economist, I think that might be pretty cool?
|
| Long living instance, more intention being the local
| communities vs just duplicated meme subreddits, a stronger
| stance around moderation, etc and enough federating that
| everyone has choice and there's little centralization.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > but the instances being essentially volunteers makes me
| nervous about future burnout and lack of longevity.
|
| Welcome to the early dial-up and internet world pre-
| corporatization.
|
| I'm looking forward to Lemmy implementing account migration
| to add some insurance, but individual and community owned
| services was much of what built the internet. It's pretty
| resilient.
|
| Meanwhile, something being owned by a corporation is far from
| any kind of guarantee. Shall we go through the Google
| graveyard?
| d0gbread wrote:
| You might not be wrong but I wouldn't mind seeing some
| actual data on the topic (admittedly have not looked).
| Google feels like a cheap example since their non-ads
| business model is to throw mud at the wall, and the
| graveyard is full of tech that did often make it into core
| apps. I've been on Gmail since forever, which stands as a
| Google-backed example of my previous comment sans some
| serious but statistically insignificant drama, which has
| prompted some to migrate and still have email.
|
| Much of the early internet also isn't there anymore, and
| running a modern web application that hosts images, gifs,
| and videos at scale is obviously a different beast than
| static html where a marquee tag is as fancy as it gets.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| I would claim the early web diminished primarily because
| the users left, not because the services died off and
| left users stranded (though I'll note that a lot of early
| services--IRC, Usenet, message boards, blogs, etc, are
| still around, though reduced in size and scope).
|
| As for services dying, I picked Google because it was
| easy. But the graveyard is endless: Myspace, Friendster,
| and Geocities all spring to mind, just in the social
| space (and since you don't want to talk about Google, I
| won't mention Google+ or Orkut).
|
| That's not to say the early internet was somehow perfect.
| My point is simply that a service being commercial offers
| no guarantee of longevity, and given the need to extract
| profit or die, with no way for a community to take over
| an unprofitable service and run it for their own benefit,
| I'd claim the opposite is true, especially as interest
| rates have risen and cheap funding has become more
| scarce, thereby placing a lot more pressure on those
| services to monetize or die.
|
| > and running a modern web application that hosts images,
| gifs, and videos at scale is obviously a different beast
| than static html where a marquee tag is as fancy as it
| gets.
|
| Except that's not what a Lemmy or Mastodon instance has
| to do. A small instance might only need to serve dozens
| or hundreds of users, and it only needs to host and serve
| the content they subscribe to.
|
| I'll take that over one massive single point of failure.
| d0gbread wrote:
| I'm certainly not advocating for a single point of
| failure, but rather a monetized, competitive space that
| competes on user experience. More akin to music streaming
| than movie streaming.
|
| I think Usenet and forum numbers probably pale in
| comparison to Reddit type platforms. Centralization is
| easier for mass appeal
| rglullis wrote:
| I guess you will be interested in taking a look at
| https://communick.news/post/23471
| danielbln wrote:
| The BBC already put up a Fediverse instance (Mastodon), I
| expect that to happen more often. It's early days, but the
| fact that we're not at the whim of a couple of shitty Bay
| Area VC funded companies is so nice that I'll forgive the
| growing pains.
| zacte wrote:
| Sync makes Lemmy feel a lot like Reddit, especially since it used
| to be my go-to app a year ago. Lemmy feels like it's been flooded
| with repost bots from Reddit making the content feel a lot less
| engaging.
|
| Personally I'm okay not having the topic on Lemmy if there aren't
| any people posting about it.
| howenterprisey wrote:
| Any signs of rif is fun for Lemmy? I've tried reaching out for
| the source code myself but got no response.
|
| Edit: Oh! The developer is working on a tildes app:
| https://www.talklittle.com/rif-is-fun/whats-next Guess I'll just
| be waiting patiently, then.
| fallinghawks wrote:
| I used Sync for the last couple years and having it for Lemmy is
| great. It feels like I'm browsing Reddit and has made the
| transition much easier. I wish I could leave Reddit entirely, but
| there are a couple of subs that don't yet have an equivalent on
| Lemmy.
| cache_hit wrote:
| So good! Kinda just feels like I wouldn't even be able to tell
| the difference, save for my subreddits not being there. Love
| Sync, had always been my go-to app, and I'm glad it has a future.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Since there are other alternatives in the comments, I'll toss out
| Connect for Lemmy
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kuroneko.l...
| which I find much nicer than Sync
|
| One should also try https://github.com/dessalines/jerboa#readme
| from one of the Lemmy contributors
| alex_c wrote:
| Link to the app listing (op's link goes to the data safety info):
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.syncapps.le...
| smusamashah wrote:
| There is also Boost for Lemmy
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.rubenmayay...
|
| Have been using Boost for reddit for years, still using it with
| ReVanced patch.
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(page generated 2023-08-06 23:02 UTC)