Not sure how they are forcing their users to use snaps any more than debian is forcing their users to use apt. It’s a package manager the distro is consciously supporting. If you don’t like snaps then you should probably just stop using Ubuntu.

Yes, I agreeing that symlinking sunsetted apt packages to install the snap version without prior notification is a bit underhanded: I can see they want to make the switch easy for casual users, but the transparency isn’t there for advanced users. I still think it’s a fine distro for newer and casual users.