There's this notion that because a service is free, the provider shouldn't give a fuck about the service they're providing, and the user better be thankful the service exists at all.

There's also this notion that if someone provides a service, even though it's free, they obviously have some business model or similar interest or they wouldn't do it, so they better give a fuck about their users, or their users are gonna hurt them as a provider by leaving for another provider.

I won't say which is right and which is wrong (I feel both are wrong), but the two are obviously in conflict. The whole open source community is based upon the former. Ad supported data-mining businesses are based upon the latter. Hence the conjecture by the OP.