My phone, at least, (S25U) doesn’t have those in the list. I forget if Facebook was on the phone when I got it, but if it was I deleted it.

None of this is true. I hate notifications so I turn them off and then I don’t get them.

I’ve been on Galaxy for my last 3 phones, and I’ve never created a Samsung account. Much of what I read about them turns out to be FUD.

What are they?

I made the switch from iPhone to Samsung Galaxy several generations ago and I’ve been very happy with it. I just got the S25 Ultra a few weeks ago, coming from the S20+ I got in 2020. These phones don’t slow down over time, the S20+ felt very usable despite being 5 years old. And I upgraded from S8 to S20 without being forced to because the S8 became slow.

The bloat situation is great, you can uninstall Facebook and the other crap on day one and never see it again. There’s a lot of features I’ll never use on this phone but they don’t get in my way.

I’ve never had a Samsung account. I’ll never accidentally use any of the AI or other Samsung cloud features because they require a Samsung account.

You may want to use the Samsung account for their backup and other features and that’s fine, it’s just impressive how optional it is.

Probably, and also the first step towards adopting Adobe’s shitty business model.

If you have to sign up to use it, it isn’t free.