I feel that's only really true in the way it is of a JS bitcoin miner. Locally appears to make something free (if discounting time/energy) that wasn't before, but is overall a detriment to average affordability because it's a net loss of resources (mostly just a zero-sum game, with some small side benefits).

I don't disagree with that at all, and by 'free' I suppose I didn't even mean 'as in free beer', I just meant there was no financial transaction taking place.

Maybe at some point we're really gonna see an upfront-micropayment structure as some people have mused about.

"Free" services that are unable to pay for themselves distort the market. And eventually they price out honest and non tracking competition.

From another noyb article: personalized ads account for < 10% of revenue for newspapers