No I am not moving the goalposts, the alternative shouldn’t just exist it should actually do the job and by doing the job, I don’t mean that if people made the effort to use it, it can do the job. I mean people should be using it. Also, no people are not stupid and its not their fault for not using it.
You are completely ignoring the impact that having billions of dollars at your disposal to spend on keeping users addicted to your platform can have. There is no way a free platform can compete with X/Instagram/TikTok, even if such platform had a better product(which they do btw). Just look at Whatsapp/iMessage, both are terrible apps, there are MANY better options, with way more features, and somehow they are still the most used messaging apps in the Western.