[ben_w]

It is not well understood that they are a service.

To many people it is more like a place, and places are free. Sure, technically you can buy a place and own it and charge for access, and technically somebody owns almost all places you might care to go to, but mostly we think of them as free.

The fact that it costs nothing, monetarily, to access… that very thing often makes something seem like it has no cost.

[gdrift]

I don't understand why people think these services cost nothing monetarily.

All ads are not free, all advertised products already include the cost of advertising in their price.

So everybody are paying for those "free" services whether they use them or not.

[ben_w]

I suspect most people don’t get as far as “thinking” that in a conscious, deliberative, system-2 sense of the word — They see no price tag, so it’s free.