.........all automatically and in the background without giving a warning explaining what is going on?
Yes.
They give the user tokens generated out of the thin air without telling them that's not bitcoin.
See
their guide on how to withdraw from binance.
They don't say anything about the difference between the networks at all.
The only warning is:
Please make sure that the selected network is the same as the network of the platform you are withdrawing funds from or depositing funds to. If you select the wrong network, you will lose your funds.
A newbie reading this guide will surely think that there are four kinds of bitcoin networks.
So you are saying that provided OP's friend definitely gave a bitcoin address to Binance, it would have been impossible for him to withdraw to one of the other networks?
Yes.
So why then in OP's first post does he say Binance said coins were withdrawn on the wrong network?
That can't be true.
To make sure about this, I just selected BSC network and entered a bitcoin address

The network was automatically changed to BTC.
As I already said, sending to a wrong chain is possible only if use ERC20 or BSC. Because they same address format.