A few thoughts as to why systemd is as tolerated as it is:

* Integrating systemd into Debian didn't cause any apparent disruption to the Debian release cycle (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian#Sarge_and_later_release...). Meanwhile, according to TFA, forking Debian to keep not having systemd (when it already didn't) took longer than that release cycle, while starting most of the way through it. Any early adopters essentially missed an entire version.

* People who oppose systemd apparently would say things in 2018, and update them in 2023, like

> The latest invention by Lennart Poettering called systemd-homed is presented as a new way to handle home directories, whereas it really just is a way to get one step closer to eliminating /etc, which is something Red Hat has dreamed about for a long time.

while neither explaining why "eliminating /etc" would be a bad thing, nor evidencing such a "dream" (in an article that does evidence many other things), nor apparently noticing that /etc hadn't gone anywhere in those 5 years (and still hasn't - as I write this, there are nearly 2500 files recursively in my /etc). More generally, no explanation is forthcoming about how "development... [being] almost completely hijacked by major companies" has resulted in any actual harmful effect on the software.

The FOSS world had the choice to discriminate against corporate interests; instead, for years I listened to arguments about why I shouldn't be able to make my software et gratis et libre to hobbyists while charging a substantial fee to businesses, and about how this is incompatible with what they were trying to do (as explained by the OSI).

* Relatedly, the apparent evidence that "Red Hat wants to become the next Microsoft Windows" consists of systemd supposedly helping to "make desktop systems like GNOME function like Microsoft Windows.", and that Poettering wants Linux to be able to run on all hardware and not have "pointless differences between distributions".

If I need to think about which distribution I'm using, I think it's only fair for it to make meaningful differences; if I hop distros, why would I want to run into arbitrary and capricious road bumps?

As for GNOME, I have to wonder if the author has used that software. And again, I don't understand why it should be a bad thing if, e.g., Cinnamon provides a (vaguely) Windows-like UI. (Never mind that this is a case where the actual GNOME product had to be forked to actually "make it function like Microsoft Windows"!)

* End users are, in all likelihood, not running into the supposed issues with systemd as software (I haven't) while having a poor experience with a bunch of application-level stuff that gets very little support. (Speaking of GNOME - I especially have had a poor experience with their stuff. And one of the biggest reasons I'd consider switching away from Mint is to avoid the feeling of vendor lock-in I'm getting from it.)

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tl;dr: systemd opponents tend to come across to me as conspiracy theorists - legit, by-the-book definition ones, who allege a secret (albeit not that secret) plan by a group (Microsoft, RedHat, and collaborators at various other distros) to do something harmful. The problem is, they seem to be terrible at describing the harm they apparently see as self-evident, while paying less attention to other serious problems in the Linux world unrelated to systemd. That doesn't make their argument less valid, but it does make me very much less inclined to care about it.