When apps just get it...
from ropatrick@lemmy.world to privacy@lemmy.ml on 17 Apr 15:18
https://lemmy.world/post/45722027

Currently on an enjoyable journey of de-googling, upping privacy, data sovereignty and so on.

Apps that do this just get it.

#privacy

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irate944@piefed.social on 17 Apr 15:38 next collapse

I jumped on their github page and skimmed a few issues, and found this: https://github.com/aeharding/voyager/issues/1027

It looks like they just need to figure out a couple of issues before they implement notifications, so it might happen someday. But taking into account how old these issues are, it’s not their priority.

kingofras@lemmy.world on 17 Apr 16:30 collapse

You’d still be able to just leave it turned off. It’s quite peaceful to lemmy without.

JayGray91@piefed.social on 17 Apr 19:07 next collapse

While I am still trying to wean off reddit, seeing the equivalent mail icon light up on threadiverse does not entail dread like on reddit

At least for now since I’ve only been replying to whimsical, silly etc. posts and comments lol

Albbi@lemmy.ca on 17 Apr 20:41 collapse

I’ll add to your dose fediverse fun instead of reddit comment regret.

vietnoomer@lemdro.id on 18 Apr 06:52 collapse

It’s crazy how unmotivated y’all are to form actual social links online. Notifications are actually very important for people who treat platforms interchangeably.

ferric_carcinization@lemmy.ml on 18 Apr 09:39 collapse

Notifications are actually very important for people who treat platforms interchangeably.

How so? At least, I don’t think that they’re important to Lemmy, as it’s not about real-time person-to-person communication, but rather discussion about topics.

vietnoomer@lemdro.id on 18 Apr 11:50 collapse

It should probably facilitate discussions then 🤯 you can just silence & deprioritize notifications. The point is having it all in a unified feed. RSS does that well, but adding the RSS notifs of important shit + messages is helpful.

People often need to continue conversations to clarify information & elaborate… I can’t believe I’m saying something this obvious. Shades of Mastodon users justifying suicidal design choices that were later rolled back here.

Nice ad for one of the apps that constantly pushes instances in the World (which blocks VPNs, nice privacy dumbasses!) social graph in multiple interfaces that are not adaptive to user experience

lemmy.world/post/11967676

If you encounter an issue where you cannot post or comment, but voting is functioning correctly, it is most likely because we have implemented a block for VPN & Tor users.

Specifically allowing VPN voting 🤔 what a curious choice. Lemmy.world users are so stupid that they don’t even see the difference between having an anonymous account & having their IP scraped by random former Reddit mods. Raised in a barn, perhaps?

ferric_carcinization@lemmy.ml on 18 Apr 12:47 collapse

I’m not sure what the correct terms are, so I’ll refer to in-app/in-client notifications as internal notifications and mobile-style out-of-app notifications as external notifications.

Based on what people usually refer to with the word “notification” in the context of social applications and messaging services, and your comment, I’m assuming you’re talking about external notifications. If you mean all notifications in general, I’ve misunderstood your point and can ignore the rest of this comment. I do think that internal notifications are useful.

I’m not saying that external notifications are useless, but rather that I don’t feel that they’re as important as you seem to make it out to be.

Also, even if your Lemmy client doesn’t support external notifications, Lemmy supports RSS, which you can subscribe to with a different application.

It should probably facilitate discussions then

Discussions do not have to be between only two people, others can continue where someone else left off.

People often need to continue conversations to clarify information & elaborate…

This is true, but it doesn’t require notifications outside of the client. For example, I noticed your reply as Lemmy’s web UI showed that I had an unread message.

I don’t mind continuing a discussion over multiple days, though I’m not sure if this applies to everyone.

Shades of Mastodon users justifying suicidal design choices that were later rolled back here.

Could you elaborate? I don’t use Mastodon, as I don’t see the value in “micro-blogging” and prefer to follow topics rather than people.

As for the rest of your comment, I too disagree with blocking VPNs & Tor to fix their CSAM problem, but I don’t see how that is relevant to this discussion? Though I do not mind if you want to discuss that instead.

vietnoomer@lemdro.id on 19 Apr 13:44 collapse

Didn’t read this btw, which is allegedly something you think is actually desirable in communication software. People not seeing posts that were intended for their reading. I am simply too noided not to notice all of these sites are the same thing under the hood & can be represented in each other’s formats. None of them are “for” anything.

Confining@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 17 Apr 15:55 next collapse

I’m using voyager right now and I love it.

[deleted] on 17 Apr 15:56 next collapse

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TachyonTele@piefed.social on 17 Apr 16:04 next collapse

Is this the app that costs money, or was that a different one? I always forget.

steel_for_humans@piefed.social on 17 Apr 16:14 next collapse

Voyager is free.

klymilark@walsh.fallcounty.omg.lol on 17 Apr 16:18 next collapse

@TachyonTele Voyager was free last I checked, and I havent seen any non-free lemmy apps?

TachyonTele@piefed.social on 17 Apr 16:20 next collapse

There’s one that costs money and hasnt been updated in years. I can remember it’s name though. It was a big deal when it came out.

dubyakay@lemmy.ca on 17 Apr 17:01 next collapse

Voyager is donations only. I donate to it every time a thread like this comes up in the wild.

TachyonTele@piefed.social on 17 Apr 17:06 collapse

Yeah, and that’s completely fine. There’s nothing wrong with donations.

hesh@quokk.au on 17 Apr 17:00 next collapse

Maybe Boost?

cobysev@lemmy.world on 17 Apr 17:12 collapse

Sync for Lemmy has a paid version that gets rid of ads. Its developer was one of the most vocal when Reddit started charging developers for access to their API. Sync for Reddit was one of the most popular third-party Reddit apps before then.

Its developer is also absent all the time. They poke their head in every few months, fix a bunch of problems, then disappear into the nether for an indeterminate amount of time.

I actually switched to Voyager because I was annoyed at how difficult it was to get anything fixed on Sync. And of course, Voyager is free.

TachyonTele@piefed.social on 17 Apr 17:14 collapse

That’s right it’s sync! Yup that’s exactly the one i was thinking of. Thanks

beyond@linkage.ds8.zone on 18 Apr 18:10 collapse

Free software is about freedom, not price. It is perfectly ok to sell free software. Even if Voyager cost money to download as long as it gives users the four freedoms it is free software.

As far as I know there are several non-free Lemmy apps as well as a handful of paid apps.

favoredponcho@lemmy.zip on 17 Apr 18:32 collapse

Go here and find out vger.app

deranger@sh.itjust.works on 17 Apr 16:05 next collapse

Been using Voyager since it was called Wefwef for both mobile and desktop Lemmy, love it.

Sunny@slrpnk.net on 17 Apr 23:49 next collapse

Wow same here, had actually forgotten it used to be called WefWef until you mentioned it.

freijon@lemmy.zip on 18 Apr 09:02 collapse

I just installed Voyager yesterday evening. I had to switch instances. On the new instance my old client (Thunder) didn’t load images consistently. I like it so far.

jestho@lemmy.zip on 17 Apr 16:21 next collapse

I’m still not sure if those are a second pair of whiskers, or if it’s a Wallace & Gromit style mouth

ropatrick@lemmy.world on 17 Apr 22:21 collapse

I can’t unsee that now. 😫

cRazi_man@europe.pub on 17 Apr 16:30 next collapse

There’s de-googling and privacy and all…thats all great. But it is a completely separate thing to take back attention from distractions, bullshit notifications and letting tech overlords reach into our daily lives and disrupting our focus and attention whenever they feel like it. Notification real estate is hugely valuable and the default for every app should be “off”, with further fine tuning as needed. Better bulk settings are needed for notification settings adjustment.

Technology Connections has done a brilliant video about notifications recently.

upandatom@lemmy.world on 17 Apr 23:38 collapse

I agree completely and believe it’s an issue for people with disabilities too. Hopefully more and more people are taking notice and speaking out. I bet good videos help raise awareness too!

s38b35M5@lemmy.world on 17 Apr 17:24 next collapse

That really is nice, right? I also like when my apps have no mechanism to connect to the internet, so you don’t have to worry about trackers, data exfiltration, etc.

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/2c2a4a50-13ba-44e2-933e-729500ff670c.png">

MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip on 17 Apr 17:59 next collapse

I too disable notifications on all my news sources. They are reserved for personal connections only.

My dad on the other hand, often doesn’t see my messages, because he has always the notification stack full and doesn’t notice the new ones. Same in E-Mail inbox.

And can we please outlaw pre-selected newsletters? They are annoying anyway, if you don’t actively choose them.

favoredponcho@lemmy.zip on 17 Apr 18:33 next collapse

@aeharding@vger.social is a local hero

aeharding@vger.social on 17 Apr 19:23 collapse

Hey thanks! ^^

HereIAm@lemmy.world on 18 Apr 10:07 collapse

Your name is purple! Witch!

regedit@lemmy.zip on 18 Apr 15:12 collapse

Witch!

They turned me into a newt!

blinfabian@feddit.nl on 17 Apr 19:09 next collapse

no it doesnt get it, i actually tried to turn it on but they dont have the option :/

notifications off by default is good tho

B0NK3RS@lazysoci.al on 17 Apr 19:41 next collapse

I don’t even bother with most apps anymore unless I have to. I use the Photon UI, so p.lazysoci.al or photon.lemmy.world

ropatrick@lemmy.world on 17 Apr 22:25 collapse

Can you tell me more about that? I was able to see this thread on those links but not familiar with Photon. I searched a bit but a few different techie things came up.

You had me at “don’t even bother with most apps any more…” 😁

B0NK3RS@lazysoci.al on 18 Apr 00:41 collapse

The alternative frontends need to be added to a Lemmy server by the admins so not everywhere has them. Lemmy.world has quite a few though which are listed in the sidebar.

<img alt="" src="https://lazysoci.al/pictrs/image/f6406cea-d9c7-41e5-b4fe-cdce825fc3da.png">

ropatrick@lemmy.world on 18 Apr 10:29 collapse

Ah OK thanks. Its not an app as such. I get you now. I was searxh8ng for an app or UI install called Photon!

Thank you!

sompreno@lemmy.zip on 17 Apr 23:06 next collapse

I mean considering lemmy is public information and messages are unencrypted…

astropenguin5@lemmy.world on 17 Apr 23:20 next collapse

But I know that and choose to make public statements. Plus, there are ways to be anonymous-ish about it still

sompreno@lemmy.zip on 18 Apr 02:04 collapse

True, but my comment was about how it was irrelevant that voyager doesn’t allow tracking through notifications when Lemmy is inherently insecure. Although in an open communication like Lemmy the insecurity doesn’t matter as much.

astropenguin5@lemmy.world on 18 Apr 06:38 next collapse

Ah fair, didn’t think of it like that

ropatrick@lemmy.world on 18 Apr 10:23 collapse

Hi folks.

It was mainly my joy that an app’s default position is “we don’t do notifications”. I’ve never seen that before. Usually one is rushing to turn them off.

I guess its privacy on two levels; privacy from potential tracking, but also privacy from intrusion, constant attention etc.

I get that Lemmy is public and it could be irrelevant if my notifications are on or not. Its just such a refreshing position to see in an app.

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 18 Apr 10:00 collapse

oh, I thought OP’s point is Voyager does not even want you to bother with notifications that could make you more addicted

edit: someone else has taken it that way too: europe.pub/comment/7070900

sompreno@lemmy.zip on 18 Apr 10:09 collapse

I’ve made an assumption that op was referring to how messages can be pulled from push notification post decryption since they were talking about upping privacy and data sovereignty.

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 18 Apr 10:57 collapse

wait, I think maybe there is a misunderstanding in what happened in other apps. you are referring to the signal notifications thing, right?

sompreno@lemmy.zip on 18 Apr 11:56 collapse

Yes but its not just signal but any app with push notifications

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 18 Apr 19:15 next collapse

ok. push notifications don’t universally leak your data. apps can receive either the message contents in the push notification, which is unsafe (less so if encrypted), or a ping that there is some kind of a new notification, upon which the app can connect to the server to fetch them. Popular messaging apps probably do the former for some reason. in mattermost its configurable by the server operator but defaults to leaking data. safe messaging apps don’t do this, they just send an empty notification or such, and the app checks in for updates. signal and matrix are like that, but in both cases they wouldn’t even be able to send the message when it is encrypted.

but back to voyager: to be able to use push notifications, the server needs to send them. Lemmy does not have the capability for that, probably not even in the 1.0 version they are working on. so the way for Voyager to fetch notifications is to check in periodically instead of using a push service.

sompreno@lemmy.zip on 19 Apr 01:53 collapse

Doesn’t signal use ping notifications and the whole problem was with how the mobile os handles the notifications. From my understanding of the controversy the os stored information from the app when a notification is detected in a local directory (hence why it worked on signal)

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 19 Apr 11:14 collapse

yes, it was that the phone was saving notifications to a database, because the notification history feature was not disabled by the user. but that affects non-push notifications too, and it only becomes a problem when your phone is compromised (malware, including police malware)

but if you don’t trust your phone with not leaking your notifications, you shouldn’t trust it not leak what you typed in and what you watch on it either, because the operating system has access to all of these too. in that case you are looking for a better phone brand, maybe even a custom rom that’s known for privacy

WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 18 Apr 19:20 collapse

one more thing: its not actually irrelevant for privacy whether lemmy sends our public comments across google’s push service. we are not anonymous, but we don’t use real names either so it’s partially private, but when google connects your notifications (or just the timestamp of them with comments here), they will be able to figure out what is your account. they can use that information for stalker marketing or give it to the authorities later on

sompreno@lemmy.zip on 19 Apr 02:04 collapse

You’re right about it not being irrelevant but I was just talking the security of sent messages in Lemmy which can be read by everyone regardless

PalmTreeIsBestTree@lemmy.world on 18 Apr 13:39 collapse

At this point, I gave up a long time ago on hiding my opinions. I’d rather die for my ability to speak out than to stay silent.

[deleted] on 18 Apr 02:32 next collapse

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parzival@lemmy.org on 18 Apr 07:35 collapse

Tell them about Molly: molly.im and Molly socket, molly is a signal fork with all the closed source stuff ripped out and replaced, and it lets you use unifiedpush

[deleted] on 18 Apr 08:23 collapse

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spicehoarder@lemmy.zip on 18 Apr 08:51 collapse

Hmm, this seems not healthy. Are you sure you’re happy with them?

[deleted] on 18 Apr 09:08 next collapse

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WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works on 18 Apr 09:58 collapse

do you remember what were they saying? they deleted everything

spicehoarder@lemmy.zip on 18 Apr 11:44 collapse

Yeah, but it’s not very exciting. Long story short, they’re still engaging in a toxic relationship via signal.

lonesomeCat@lemmy.ml on 18 Apr 19:34 next collapse

Installed Lineage 4 months ago. My phone uptime is 4 months.

nixukty@lemmy.zip on 19 Apr 06:25 next collapse

Lemmy also doesn’t support unifiedpush so it’s impractical to send notifications lol

hiramfromthechi@lemmy.world on 18 Apr 17:09 collapse

I can’t emphasize how important it is for you to control your phone, especially notifications. Every notification is literally a mind hijacking attempt. Regardless of the type of notification, it’s something that disrupts our thinking and our flow.

Some of them are necessary—but most aren’t.

All the native apps will of course try to get as much permission from you as possible, including notifications. Don’t allow this permission freely.

Get really strict about which apps need to send you notifications, and when. Take it from a dude who used to give free reign to all apps for notifications.

Once I started thinking in a more digitally minimalistic way, it made a huge difference.

Running GrapheneOS actually helped with this a lot. But you don’t need GOS to do this and feel the difference.

I got some notifications turned on, but most of em are silent. So they still get delivered, but they’re not time-sensitive. They’ll be there when I check my phone next. I don’t need em interrupting whatever I was doing or thinking.

TL;DR: Be strict about which notifications you allow, and when. It’ll do wonders for your thinking, productivity, and mental health.

ropatrick@lemmy.world on 18 Apr 20:42 collapse

Thanks for your thoughts. Totally agree.

I was in the verge of installing GOS but I think there is an issue with a first responder app that we are about to get access to, throwing errors of a phone seems to be rooted or similar, so I’ll have to check that it more. If its a non issue, GOS will be in play.