And they're still selling the use of the information to the advertisers, even if not the specific data value. So they are cheating advertisers with out-dated information.
Are you connected using 3G? They'll be able to infer from that which areas you spend most of your time in, because your provider sells that information on to them. Oh yes. (Possibly.)
I want to install a component on all computers so that whenever someone writes "just saying" it opens a hatch and punches them in the privates.
And if they also say anything equivalent to "you're not allowed to complain because it's free" or "the adverts are the price you pay" or similar then it also slaps them round the face.
I don't entirely subscribe to that notion, and free things can certainly be shit but the adverts are the price you pay and honestly, if you dislike it so much just stop using it.
I don't particularly enjoy the Facebook experience, but it's free and mostly works.
Yeah paying a sub isn't a good model either. They're both kinda old-media models shoehorned into the web where they don't really fit.
Donation models are cool, so long as you've got a userbase who (enough of whom at least) will pay. And so long as you let people who don't donate see everything (otherwise it's just subs under a different name).
The crop of free-to-play games of late are kinda interesting (the ones that are genuinely free-to-play, that is, rather than pay-to-win). Making your service free but selling vanity/convenience items. Although applying that to a website takes us into Delphi territory.
Someone with more clevers than me once said, "go ahead and use this service for free, it doesn't really cost me much if you do, and I'm happy to help people when I can."
It was me. Multiple times.
And no doubt plenty of other people too.
Not everyone on earth is a money-hungry selfish twat.