It's pretty well established that people are just generally irrational about free things. Because of this, I think any business model involving giving something away for free, whether it's a loss leader or or ad supported or something else, is fundamentally anti-competetive. Cognitive biases place any competitor charging for the good/service at a disadvantage. If you're a non profit, go ahead and give things away. If you're a business, you should have to charge.

I think the whole "if it's free, you're the product" nugget of information has not been broadly understood by folks, or if it has, maybe folks don't care as much about their data.

I do live these days with the understanding that pretty much all of my personal info is out there one way or another, a social security number is about as private as a phone number these days.