Yeah, it's no worse than any app that serves ads. The permissions are necessary for the most part, and are necessary if you're going to be on the play store.
The trackers are part of the ad suite. And that does suck, but it isn't unusual overall. It's also easy as hell to block, so that reduces the worry.
Is it ideal? No. But it's the same as sync was before, and that's what hundreds of people asked for, that sync be brought over for lemmy use. Not that he change his monetization, not that he do the work as a donation to the world, just that he makes it work for lemmy. And that was from people that were paying for ultra already too.
That's what Dawson did, he responded to requests from people that were previously using the app. We got what we asked for. The threads where it was being asked, most of the crowd was specifying that they would gladly pay for it as well. Is the price higher? Yeah, a good bit. It's also a smaller user base, after he's been burnt to hell by reddit, so making sure to get paid with a high enough rate that it's sustainable makes sense.
Don't get me wrong, I also get the objections to it. But he did what people originally asked for, and did it in a smart way.