The problem isn’t that it’s paid. There is nothing wrong with paid software. The ‘free’ in ‘Free and Open Source Software’ is for Freedom, not for zero cost.

The problem many people on Lemmy have with sync is that it’s proprietary/closed source and loaded with trackers and ads, relying on a subscription model to remove things that should not be there to begin with.

This business model of collecting and selling user data is considered extremely unethical by many, including myself. I, and other free software advocates, also have a problem with shutting users off from viewing, accessing, and modifying the code that runs on their own devices.

Lemmy was built on the principals of software freedom, and many of us were attracted here for precisely those reasons.

Many of us see proprietary adware apps such as sync to be unethical, and are especially uncomfortable with them being used on top of Lemmy since we view them as being antithetical to principals upon which Lemmy was founded.

As an open source enthusiast, it was quite exciting to see a truly free/libre platform gain popular traction, and then extremely disheartening to see how quickly so many users would squander their new found digital freedom for a few minor conveniences.