Saw this today and now I’m reconsidering if Boost is right for me. I’m really hoping this is shitty boiler plate that was accidentally copied and over looked because that is some bullshit to say “unless we decide we want to use your personal data for whatever we want”.
I know “legitimate interest” is a phrase from the cookies law but there is no legitimate interest justification for this. My data is my data and I decide who has a legitimate interest in it so advertisers can fuck off, as can Boost if this the direction it’s going.
Edit to say this blew up. I didn’t realise I was kicking as big a hornet’s nest and haven’t read all the comments yet.
To be clear, what I don’t like about this and other provisions in the terms is the language and implications around data use. I’ve no problem with ads being shown - I want developers to get paid for the work they do and that makes it possible for users to have “free” access to software if they can’t afford to purchase.
I also want to add the response from Boost’s dev below to make sure it’s visible. You’ll see that it is boilerplate but required by Google and was present in Boost for reddit. I just hadn’t seen it because I purchased it immediately based on a recommendation. It doesn’t make me happy about it but does remove some doubts I was having about the direction Boost is heading.
I will be purchasing the app to support the dev because I do like Boost but I understand not everyone can afford everything so you’ll see some other suggestions in the comments below that don’t have any ads if you’re not happy with the free version and ads with their associated loss of data privacy.
Dev here.
The dialog and its content is not created by me, it is a standard solution from Google to comply with GDPR and other laws. More info here: https://support.google.com/admob/answer/10114014?hl=en
The consent dialog is also required by Google AdMob to show ads, and it is shown when the ad network is initialized.
When the app launches, first it checks for the remove ads purchase, and if it is not present, it will initialize the ads sdk. The ad network is not initialized if the remove ads purchase is detected.
Boost for Reddit was using the very same ad networks and consent dialog.
I love how they say “Legitimate Interest”, normally they say “Legal Reason” or “To comply with law enforcement” or something that makes it clear the rule would only be broken under extraneous circumstances.
But “Legitimate Interest”, mother fucker, you wouldn’t even be asking if I wanted to to opt out if you didn’t already have a “Legitimate Interest” in monetizing every aspect of life. One of these days we’re gonna get cybernetic implants that block our lungs off unless we watch a five second ad, because somehow that’s a law now.
Cheese and fucking rice!
No, “legitimate interest” is a specific phrase from the law. It’s worded that way for a reason, they have little wiggle room in that regard. It’s related to the primary function the entity in question wants to perform.
Like, if you’re serving ads, you for example need to read the language of someone’s browser. And depending on how you route and serve content, you might need to intermittently store that as part of a session. That is legitimate interest, or one example of it at least.
There are basically three tiers to online tracking:
Legitimate interest is the middle one. You need to ask consent, but you can presume consent. And sure, companies abuse this as it’s intentionally not strictly worded, but many many companies also do not abuse it.
All right that’s good because that is some of the most sus wording I’ve ever seen, so what’s nice to have someone more familiar with the jar again point out that this is not bullshit
EU’s GDPR is pretty decent, but it does include a little bit of leeway to allow for “direct marketing”, or it would make ads virtually impossible to display in a profitable way.
The wording there takes this form of “legitimate interest”, while clarifying that this cannot be used to minimize user rights granted by the GDPR.
Some info here.
I feel a big part of my concern is addressed by the dev’s explanation and I now know it’s a problem with Google’s ad network with its terms and conditions though they’re all pretty similar in that regard unfortunately. I feel comfortable enough purchasing the app now which removes the rest of my concern because that removes any tracking associated with ads in the free version.