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My guess is part (not all) of this is due to people assuming that free offerings are already generating revenue in some fashion other than a direct payment (e.g

My guess is part (not all) of this is due to people assuming that free offerings are already generating revenue in some fashion other than a direct payment (e.g., advertising for Google/Facebook), and thus they're still helping your business and entitled to support as much as anybody. Whether the assumption is right or wrong for each business, it's not hard to see how we've gotten here.

Strom 6y ago
This is correct in my experience. It also cuts deeper than just advertising or selling user data. It's the classic exposure argument. Give me the service for free and someone else might pay for it who hears about the service through my social network. As discussed elsewhere in this thread, this line of thinking can even be completely reasonable for various services that have low costs associated with the free offering. It's when the free offering costs a significant amount to operate that you start running into trouble.