I am in favor of your main argument - freedom of choice, which trumps everything else, and you didn't need to try and justify it in any other way.

The additional examples or reasons you give are wrong.

When you interact with someone irl you are not riding on someone's infrastructure. I think one of the reasons they give for the changes is reducing cpu and memory load. This seems valid.

Then you also say that paid interactions force users to ground on the material aspects and away from emotion. But we know from fiat social media that the exact opposite is the true risk. Those who look for extreme engagement end up producing highly emotional content.