Oh give me a break. This argument that people's objections to advertising comes from some Pollyanna naivety over things being free is nonsense. Tell me the last time you have ever seen a company be upfront and explicitly offer a free tier where they tell you upfront exactly what they are harvesting about you and for what purpose (and no, "improving user experience" isn't being upfront) but also offer you a paid version where they explicitly promise not to do that.

"If the product is free then you are the product" is supposed to be a cautionary observation, not an axiomatic proscription.

Does anyone actually trust companies that offer paid services to not harvest their data? Whenever I see this trope I think to myself that whatever lack of regulation, oversight and enforcement lead to that being okay would equally allow for them to both take my money and harvest all my of data anyways.

This is akin to people who criticise socialised medicine or services and pejoratively characterize supporters as just wanting "free stuff", as if the concept of collective payment is naive or something