Well, the article (at least in the free part.. I'm not making an account just to fact check this site) mentions two studies right off the bat and claims that they shed light on the impact of corporate trolls on Reddit.
"Two significant studies, the Pew Research Center study conducted in 2018 and the Computers in Human Behavior study published in 2020, have shed light on the prevalence and impact of corporate trolls on Reddit."
If you look up these studies, the Pew Research Center has a survey they conduct and although the article claims they interviewed 2500 americans who use reddit the actual study had only 2,002 adults. It was also a study about what sites they used. It had nothing to do with Reddit. In fact, if you switch over to the Detailed Table, Reddit wasn't even mentioned as a response.
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2018/03/01/social-media-use-2018-methodology/
I could not find a "Computers in Human Behavior study published in 2020" that matched the article's description. I did find a study published by them in 2020 about selfies and body image and especially snapchat. Once again, no reddit. But I can't say I found the article mentioned.
Then again, I can't say the articles mentioned exist at all. ChatGPT almost certainly hallucinated this.
I have no problem with FOSS having a monetary cost. Devs have to eat too. The dev on Google Play store does seem to be on the core team for the app. (https://github.com/OpenTracksApp) I would hope the money is going to the project and not just that one guy but I don't see anything transparent about it. That being said it would really not be hard for any of that team to notice that the app is on the g play store and for money with that person's name attached to it. So it's most likely on the up and up.
Edit: Other people have noted that the play store version is essentially the donate to project option. I need more coffee since I didn't find that link lol
It is great to see support for the devs here though!
SHOCKED!