"This attitude of "we know what's good for you" is apparent in more and more modern tech products"
Billions of people used PYMK and are generally happy with it and Facebook in general. Who are you to tell them it's a bad thing?
If FB is so bad why don't more people leave? Lots of people on HN leave FB and I respect that choice - and lots don't and enjoy using FB with it's pros and cons. What's wrong with that?
You might be right, but that isn't necessarily so. I'm on Facebook, I hate many of it's features, the product design decisions and I think they are hostile and predatory. Wherever a knob was made available I changed it from the default to the more private setting. But I'm still on Facebook because I have no other option for effective communication with my globally distributed family and with the local tech community.
In short, I hate PYMK and many many other things, and generally I'm not happy at all with Facebook, but you counted me along the "Billions of people" because I'm (almost) daily active on the platform.
I believe you have no idea what portion of the users is happy with the platform, what portion is unaware of the privacy implication and what portion is unhappy about the platform's privacy but, as accurately put by the Zuck himself, pay the necessary tax.
But this speaks directly to the crux of this issue mentioned in the article that you take issue with.
Growth team tactics got people on the site and kept them engaged, and having a large and mostly comprehensive network makes it valuable to users. So when you find it valuable that your family and community is there, well that’s the point.