It's a cash grab. The ad revenue supports the developer. The $20/year is just a better bulk deal for the devs because they arent subject to the whims of people buying ads. The only interesting bit for me is if the $100 app lasts 5 years in its current form or if they'll try to charge more for features down the line.
Just going off the 10+ year history we had with this developer on Reddit, he has operated in good faith thus far and added features to Pro without charging for it, so I don't think he'll do that. But who knows. You're buying today with no future guarantees. At least this time we know there's no central organization that can pull the rug out from under Lemmy.
$20 to get rid of ads forever on an app that you use daily is a fair price. No one gets lynched for subscribing to YouTube premium for $14/mo just to get rid of ads
How much does Sync pay to host all the content for users to browse? How much does Sync pay content creators for that content? How much does Sync spend on creating content for the platform?
Don't get me wrong, I think devs should get paid for their work. If you're happy to pay what's being asked and see value in it, that's great. But your comparison isn't accurate.
Development and hosting are different expenses, but they're still expenses. I also find it interesting that you call out the "content creators" as being on a certain level, but app creators aren't?
What does "full time" mean? I've tried several and they're all still receiving updates. Jerboa, Voyager, Thunder.
That's the perfect example of why it's better to compare Sync to other Lemmy apps. If Sync is being developed "full time" then it might be a positive in comparison to an app that isn't. Hence, it potentially being worth the money compared to a cheaper or free app.
Does it matter to the average user? I'm simply giving numbers to put into perspective the lengths people will go for an ad-free experience
When people buy premium, they're not doing it to support Google's servers, they're paying to get rid of ads at a whopping $14 per month when they could be using the app for free
Yeah. It actually kinda does matter. Otherwise you may as well compare it to leasing a car. When you lease a car you no longer need to see ads on the train or bus.
You're comparing the cost users are willing to pay to remove ads, but services like YouTube have to pay for things that Sync doesn't. So the cost I might be willing to pay for YouTube Premium is different, as they're fundamentally different products. There's a hell of a lot more that goes into providing YouTube and Spotify, than there is to providing a UI wrapper for Lemmy.
Edit: You should be comparing the cost of Sync to other Lemmy apps. It's interesting you jumped to a completely different service when there's direct competitors to Sync you've ignored.