I mean, you don’t have to like the way things are. But pretending that aren’t that way is pointless.

I dunno, were you a reddit user? If not, I don’t think you’d understand that this particular app was top of the pile, and Dawson was begged to port it for lemmy. Those of us doing that begging, or encouraging him to do so all knew that the app was ad supported with payment options. We all voiced willingness to not only use the app, but to pony up the costs.

Third party apps are were the default way to access reddit for over a decade. Losing them, and then having to migrate to a new place is daunting. Having a familiar app with a superb interface takea away part of the emotional side of losing reddit. That may seem silly, but that’s why everyone is so hyped.

Now, the tracking part sucks, but that’s Google, not Dawson. Admob is utter shit in that regard. It’s why I block anything and everything related to it. But the way to address that is to focus on that, not blaming Dawson for being stuck in capitalism. We all gotta pay the bills, and his training as a developer is how he does that. There’s already a subscription to remove ads, ways to modify the apk to remove trackers, ad/tracker blockers, and Dawson is a very responsive guy. One of the easiest devs to communicate with overall.

How would you prefer he monetize?