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Sync for Reddit was one of the more popular Reddit apps on Android. (Maybe even the biggest?) Now that Reddit has stopped being reasonable with their API fees, the developer of Sync has been working on a Lemmy client using the same name. It released a couple days ago.
Most of the other Lemmy clients on Android are free and open source, but Sync is closed source and will be ad supported unless users pay a $20 one-time fee to remove ads or pay for a subscription to get some additional features. Because Sync is closed source, there's no way for users to audit what data the app is collecting or sending out.
Many users are using Sync because it's familiar and has a high degree of polish and functionality thanks to being a fork of a very well established app. Its popularity, along with the issues I mentioned above have got a vocal portion of the user base railing against the app and another vocal portion of the user base defending it.
I mean it is possible to audit the data it would be sending out without network access unless the dev has gone out of their way to make it non reverse enginneerable
It's not protected at all, and after reddit crapped out, the dev even released a version with a bunch of security features removed to make it easier for the reVanced team to patch the client so it keeps working with reddit, using your own api keys.
The whole discussion took place on his official support-discord. I was genuinely flabbergasted he was so cool with people disassembling the app, and even helpful in the process.
As for data tracking, it's possible to log it with the duckduckgo privacy tracker, and I confirmed that buying adfree completely removes any outgoing connections to anything but the respective lemmy instance you're using.
That's good to hear, that shows the Sync dev was most likely being honest when he said buying the paid version of the app would completely disable the ad library.
