They have both paid and free products. In a zero marginal cost world, this is a legit business model, where you offer a limited free product and then pay for the full version, say with support and more functionality, similar to what many other vendors do. In the security space, for example, Burp suite provides a "community", "professional", and "enterprise" version.
So I disagree that "free" means "collects all your mouse clicks and sells them off to the highest bidder".
Seems to me like basic financial physics. No one is saying it's moral, or that we should put up with it - but if a for-profit company is paying a bunch of employees to provide a free service to you, you'd have to be dumb not to be curious about their business model.
I get it. But to be fair, there are many for-profit companies that offer lower tiers of their products for free (or even opensource), no (or little) strings attached. So it is certainly not the norm.
Whelp, at least from a business case I know, it goes like: "Hey, you get our basic tier for free, but please, let us send you a newsletter occasionally. You don't like that? That's fine, you'll find a unsubscribe link in every newsletter."
So the business case doesn't sell the data (that's screaming for trouble), but rather uses it for their own ads.
There are ways to provide a slimmed down version for people to use and try and that way they can advertise their other products inside their software where you can pay to use them.
They simply chose to do this. Regardless if it's paid or not, this was a business decision.
If I advertise "free food" that doesn't mean it's your fault if I poison you. Nor does it mean I should be allowed to continue without legislative hindrance.
No, you are not, and you should not be expected to suspect that. This is moral fatalism.