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.
So the business case doesn't sell the data (that's screaming for trouble), but rather uses it for their own ads.