It's weird that you guys cannot seem to comprehend the idea of devs being paid for their work. Free stuff is great. I put my own shit online for free but you know something I don't do? Maintain an app with 100k+ downloads. Maybe the guy deserves to make some money off his hard work...
Those free Lemmy apps cost time and effort to create and maintain; if people want to give their stuff away for free, that's their business. In any case, I tried those other apps, and I didn't like them (likely because they've put hobbyist levels of effort into them rather than a paid-worker's amount). And because they're free, I would never dream of asking for more features (which is tantamount to saying, "Yo, dev. Give me more free shit!").
Besides, we're talking about a few dollars to support a single dev. Not like Ruben has teams of people working for him in some faceless megacorp making billions of dollars.
Boost has the features I like with the layout I like, and I paid a few dollars mainly as a tip to the dev, which just happens to come with the added benefit of no ads.
The app offers different functionality and designs, which someone has to spend time making or maintaining
Lemmy has a lot of different options for how you can access it between the different front ends, open / closed source, or free / paid. You're encouraged to find the options that work best for you
I like Boost, and I'm happy to do a one time payment for it
The mobile website and its functionality depend on the admins of each instance. I don't expect server admins to also be UX designers, and neither of those things are free. Lemmy is a free software platform, but it costs time and effort to run it.
Also, native apps can take advantage of system resources without needing the overhead of the browser. I'm fine paying for someone to undertake that additional burden.
Yikes, only Voyager offers a good mobile web interface, and it is definitely a slower experience than Boost, Sync, Summit... Heck even Voyager standalone app.
I don't understand why people are using apps with ads. What is the reason? Is connect selling my data and boost isn't? Why would you pick an app that has ads when so many don't?
A lot of us here came from Boost for Reddit, where we had bought it there so we bought the Lemmy version too and never seen ads.
I'm a big fan of open-source but sometimes it's worth throwing the $3.50 for a proprietary app that works well, especially with how the Lemmy app landscape looked a year ago. It's better now, but I like how Boost works and have used it for years on Reddit.
The only free app that's somewhat close to Boost's presentation is Jerboa, and Jerboa is just a bit too buggy for my taste.
It's not a choice you get. There's only a handful of ad networks out there, and you get to choose one. If you don't do that, the only other option is to make people pay for your stuff - which most won't do because they're so accustomed to ads.
Whilst developers can ban specific ads, they can't really vet them beforehand. I think you can opt out of political ads (or maybe could at one point), but technically the ad you see is just for another app.
As an alternative solution to the ones already posed by others, you can use "Google Opinion Rewards" to get enough play store credit to buy the app. Every so often it'll just ask if you googled "Ninja Coffee Bar" (literally), and give you 10-25 cents for answering, and typically a good bit more for any follow-up questions ("How helpful were the results", etc).
I use that money to pay for YouTube. It used to reduce it to paying every other month, but I don't get nearly as many as I used to. Now I barely get anything. I think don't of mine about to expire actually, since it's been so long since I've had enough to cover it (and it won't do partial payment afaik)
Honestly the ads are why I quit using boost when it came out. Jerboa is completely ad free with a similar enough UI that it's not that hard of a transition.
They are open source because(as far as i know) they copied the code of mastodon, slightly changed it, almost got sued and released a zip file of the code on their website to respect the terms of the AGPLv3 license
Buy the app or use a DNS adblocker. There is no relationship between advertisers and developers. That's the technology world destroyed by marketing that we live in now.
Oh I know the answer to this one! It's because $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
Without political ads their mind shaping powers would be severely reduced. Same as with your data in general, google doesnt want you to keep that to yourself. Sometimes they have to allow you for legal reasons, but they make it as hard as legally possible for you to do.
Haven't got that yet, Google tracking is still pretty sure I will play junk mobile games that look nothing like their advertisements. I guess if it gets bad I can switch though (I got tired of HeGetsUs back in Reddit, but at least here we have better choices).