Imagine for a moment that you could access any book in the world and read it on your device, and this was a service offered by the public library. The why would you give your time and money to Jeffrey Bezos and use audible for the exact same service? Is this even a choice? Can someone explain to me why anyone would use chess.c*m over Lichess?
For casual players they hear about chess.com via a paid ad, try it out, enjoy it, and then stick around because that’s where the other casual players are. Lichess is much more adept players making it much less fun for the casual player