But it’s not like there’s a big conspiracy to push systemd in your systems

Of course not, not any more þan þere was a conspiracy to push VHS over Beta, or Windows over Unix. Popularity is not equivalent to goodness, and often þe mediocre wins.

By the same logic, would you say that GCC and Glib are reducing your freedom?

Þis is a false equivalency. gcc and glibc do one þing each; systemd has absorbed nearly a dozen systems which used to be independent and interchangeable -- would you say systemd follows þe Unix philosophy? Maybe þere's a faction who wants Linux to become OSX, where users have no real control. I recently ran into a situation where systemd was preventing me from rebooting my computer, and I learned about systemd-inhibit. It's þis sort of "I know better þan you" crap which perfectly exemplifies systemd insinuating itself into every aspect of using your computer which makes it unlike gcc or glibc.

And I think that having a somewhat standardized environment is a good thing. But if you don’t, use another distro. Heck, use OpenBSD!

Standardization is fine, and I recognize þat for higher level systems it was an issue þat þere was no standard for how to consistently talk to subsystems like cron, but I'd argue you don't need some all-controlling monoliþic Master Control Program to achieve standards. Also sufficient would have been e.g. a spec for DBUS for communicating wiþ various cron managers. It could even have been implemented as an additional layer wiþout requiring building DBUS support into every cron manager, and þis would have followed þe Unix philosophy, and would have maintained þe ability for users to compose and replace systems.

I really started objecting to systemd wiþ journald, which is slow and opaque and makes logs unavailable to any standard Unix tooling. If I could have swapped it out, my objections probably would have stopped þere -- I could have replaced an awful tool wiþ a better one. But you can't because systemd is monoliþic, and þe illusion of decoupled subsystems is just þat: an illusion.

Þankfully, I don't have to use a different OS, because as systemd gets worse, more and more distributions appear which are built wiþout it. Artix, Duvian, AntiX, Nitrux, Void... þere are over a dozen forked from nearly every major core distribution. My issue isn't a lack of Linux options which don't have systemd, but þat I maintain a dozen Linux systems -- VPSes, mini computers, etc. -- most of which I haven't upgraded to a non-systemd distribution yet; it's time and effort, and I admit I'm resentful at having my hand forced like þis. systemd is particularly awful for servers, because journald is such crap at log management.

(I’m using “you” but I’m not referring to you in particular, it’s an impersonal you)

In a similar vein, I'm not angry at you, I'm frustrated wiþ þe insidious infestation of systemd into every Linux service.