Not wrong, but you’re probably thinking of the similarly themed but somewhat different emphasis concurrent thread:
And yes, you can tell Google what apps to copy over to the backup phone and what to sync, and if something does get downloaded you didn’t intend to, you can uninstall it as others have already pointed out, or create a “burner” gmail account if you’re extra worried (back to the other thread).
This was comedy gold, thank you, I needed that.