Simple. If you want Amazon to manage your devices and everything that's on them, get a Kindle. If you want to manage your devices yourself without anyone else remotely interfering, get anything besides a Kindle.
Funnily enough, I was a Kindle fan for many years and defended Kindles in several arguments here. But the direction Amazon has been heading in recent years (pushing their cloud constantly, in everything, and actively trying to discourage people from sideloading - presumably because they can't data mine you if your Kindle is offline) has made me really dislike them. Yeah, I know, Google, Microsoft et al do the same. Still, so far neither Google nor Microsoft have tried to remotely micromanage everything on my Android and Windows devices. I can opt out of any remote syncing if I want; with Amazon, I no longer can.
Remote syncing isn't necessarily a bad thing - I do use it with some things. But I want to have a choice in the matter, and I want to decide what and when to sync. Amazon has taken that choice away from me (unless I keep my (hypothetical) Kindle offline all the time).
End of rant.
