They're obviously meeting a minimum reliability level for the free tier or else no one would be using it because they would find it too unreliable. The argument

They're obviously meeting a minimum reliability level for the free tier or else no one would be using it because they would find it too unreliable. The argument is about whether their resolution time for the free tier is acceptably fast which can be measured by how many people left the service because of this event. Paying money gets you better service is the other idea in what you quoted, it's hard to imagine why you wouldn't give people better service for paying money unless you were getting more value off them through practices such as data collection. But privacy activists hate the poor so it's pretty hard to thoroughly monetize the free tier without someone trying to start a boycott to make their world a better place.