I am using Sync, and I paid for a year of it. A year from now, I'll evaluate and maybe pick something else. Do I care if it costs a tiny bit of $ for a solid app experience that performs better than the rest, because it has dedicated development resources? Nope. Having read the details on what data is collected, do I have privacy concerns? Nope. Do I think folks have gone a little over the top about certain things? Yes. Bad enough having to leave reddit without making it even more complicated.
Just fyi, the tracking is only for ads and all tracking is gone once you remove the ads through Ultra or the one time payment. I don't expect this to please most, but as someone who has used Sync for Reddit for basically my entire existence on Reddit, I've only paid a couple bucks back then for an app I used every day. So far I feel right at home here and I'm willing to pay after some time and seeing how this goes. The number of options is only growing and Sync is bringing new users to Lemmy either way. I've been through like 6 other Lemmy clients and Sync is still the one for me.
Edit: Several users confirmed tracking wasn't present after removing ads.
I haven't got a single hit on the duckduckgo app tracking. I bought a year, and if I'm still liking it then, I'll probably drop ultra and just go for the lifetime no ads. Not even sure how bad the ads are on free, because I was on my piholed network when I installed it, and paid before going to mobile data.
Ultra (subscription) and "no-ads" are two different options...no ads is a one time 20USD. Ultra includes additional features beyond the core app. It also has a lifetime option, which is the very expensive one.