Most people never bother to change the default behavior of the software they use. This change will influence the behavior of billions of people around the world and meaningfully change our reality, so it's not as simple as just disabling the feature on your own computer.
I agree that defaults matter, and I agree that this is an attempt to shape culture.
I don't agree that it's authoritarian, because if you don't like it you can turn it off. It's no more authoritarian than opt-in-by-default (aka opt-out) for organ donation that some countries do; i.e. not authoritarian.
This would be true if there is no way to disable it. I'd bet you any amount of money it's an optional feature that you can simply turn off.
You're being unnecessarily hyperbolic.