Well - the systems presented here are about the init part, not anything else. Systemd includes more functionality than merely init-stuff, so any comparison here was always biased and unfair. If you compare 5_000 lines of code to 500_000 lines of code, the comparison won't work. Systemd assembled numerous things (weed-collection via systemd-homie, for the home setup and I think you can also accidentally delete your home directory, with the systemd devs claiming this is a feature). None of those "features" listed is what I consider needed or necessary. All daemon-startup I already did via ruby as wrapper over the underlying system. For a campus site with many computers, systemd simplified managing them. I don't really see the same benefit for people who know more about computer systems at home - all the complexity is a trade-off with regard to having to learn, understand and apply what systemd brings to the table.

"It's deeply entrenched in every major distro that it's impossible to administer a linux system without it"

That's a non-sequitur, aka an after-the-fact claim made. Not every distribution transitioned into forcing systemd onto everyone - granted, the majority did, but you can find distributions that did not surrender user's rights here, be it devuan, slackware, void, gentoo (https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Gentoo_without_systemd). But admittedly it takes more effort than going into systemd. Note that many of the statements made there such as "hardening options", is just buzzword promo for systemd. It just means nothing. What should "hardening" even mean? Also, it is perfectly fine to use linux on a non-systemd system. People used to do this for decades before systemd infected the linux world. It's a smaller crowd though compared to systemd-using systems and users indeed nowadays.