[nerdjon]

How much of that is because they have been conditioned that things should be free though?

We have 10+ years of Google, Facebook, and others handing out major tools and functionality for free because of the privacy invasion.

I have to wonder how things would have looked had that not become the norm.

As far as being purposefully made worse, yeah both apps do that. Grindr charges $100, Scruff charges $120 a year. Considering how popular both apps are I have to assume they are pulling in quite a bit of money.