This was 2008, only a few years after Facebook had come out and well before the "People are the product" conversation that would come to dominate the discourse

This was 2008, only a few years after Facebook had come out and well before the "People are the product" conversation that would come to dominate the discourse around monetization. Free services like Gmail and Livejournal had set a precedent for my naivete in expecting a decent product to be available for free. I've certainly learned my lesson from that experience.