[dTal]

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.

[js8]

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.

[MrGilbert]

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.