I'm absolutely thrilled to have sync on the Fediverse, and will happily pay for a yearly subscription to help ensure LJD has sufficient compensation to keep the app up-to-date with whatever changes come to the Android/Lemmy APIs years down the road.
The problem with (even excellent) free apps for platforms like this, is they require consistent maintenance to keep up with both the platform they run on (Android), and the platform they serve content for (Lemmy). That is not a trivial amount of work, and is absolutely deserving of continued, recurring compensation IMO.
A one-time payment might make sense for a simple native game that gets produced once, has no web component, and never needs another update for its entire lifetime, but not for this. You aren't paying for a singular product, you're paying for a service. You wouldn't go to the barber and winged about needing to pay every time I get my hair cut.
IMO there are big risks consuming news & opinion from any single source.
Whether it's the CCP manipulating the TikTok algorithm, Russia buying ad space on Facebook, or American conglomerates pushing narratives on western mainstream media, there will be implicit biases everywhere.
The only real answer is to get news from multiple sources with diverging perspectives, try to find where facts overlap, challenge your own implicit biases, and form a perspective in line w/ your values.
Seeing America blame TikTok for pushing propaganda is the pot calling the kettle black -- and honestly more of a distraction than anything else.
The real important issue is that people are dying, and the existing power structures are doing jack shit to stop it.