> for free
Even if a future service doesn't have an obvious charge or subscription, just because you don't recognize how you're being exploited doesn't mean it's truly "free."
There's a reason advertising exists as an industry at all, let alone a global trillion-dollar one. Today's "free" is actually paid for by exploiting user attention and attempting to hack your brain--sometimes in ways that are culturally accepted due to long tradition of use, sometimes in new disturbing ones.
Yes. If a thing is being paid by the collection of user data (which is what advertising involves in these sorts of use cases), then it's not free in any meaningful sense. You're still paying, just using a different medium of exchange.