Israeli-founded app preloaded on Samsung phones is attracting controversy

I recently bought a cheap android device because I needed to test something on Android. The setup was about 3 hours of the device starting up, asking me questions, installing apps I explicitly told it not to, and then all sorts of other apps and OS updates trying to do their thing seemingly at once. I wasn't even transferring data, just a brand new phone, new google account.

What a horrible experience you get with some providers and phones.

It's to the point that I think there should be some sort of regulation that involves you getting a baseline experience on the OS rather than a bunch of malware out of the box.

This is why custom ROM support is the first question I ask when buying a new Android phone

Rather refurbished, because those are longer on market thus development of custom ROM (like LineageOS) is more likely. And of course you save a lot of money.