Would you agree that every business needs to find ways to earn money?
If we agree on that, could you agree that using a "free" service might be free only in the sense that you don't pay any money but instead they use your attention to sell ad space which in turn pays for their bills?
Me personally, I don't see anything wrong with that.
For instance, I'm perfectly fine with a website earning a commission on the products it reviews. I go out of my way to make sure the website that convinced me gets their commission.
However, a lot of the content is now written specifically for the commission, with zero effort spent on the content itself. That's how you get "best products of 2022" lists on January 1 2022, which contain zero useful research about the products. They add no value.
I also see more and more websites that just rephrase other websites' content, and replace the affiliate links with their own. In the end, you get a dozens of websites feeding off the same 2-3 original articles.
My favorite quote on the subject is this one by Banksy:
“People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you. You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity. Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head. You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.”
My personal philosophy is: if Google wants my money they should ask for it. Put their search engine behind a paywall. If they try to coerce me to give them money by selling my personality, needs and wants to advertisers I’ll try to prevent them any way I can.
If we agree on that, could you agree that using a "free" service might be free only in the sense that you don't pay any money but instead they use your attention to sell ad space which in turn pays for their bills?
Me personally, I don't see anything wrong with that.