Yeah, op, don't feel shamed about using sync, it's a great app that's worth using. I use it. Lots of us use it. The hate is a knee-jerk reflex to the sudden influx of excited reddit sync users who have migrated to lemmy and talked a lot about sync. I think FOSS users were expecting a FOSS-type option and were shocked when that wasn't the case. Then you also had users who were just mad that it would cost more to be used here than it was on reddit.

No one hates you for using sync.