Reminds me of the old saying. "When the service is free the product is you."
Reality isn't influenced by such dismissals or wishful thinking however. If a company's financial interests aren't aligned with the general interests of its customers, then it will trample over the interests of its customers. Google, Facebook, any company that's selling advertising are not only not your friends, but they're screwing you over.
Free Software is free, and you aren't the product when you use it. In most cases its the only software that actually puts the user first.
Saying "If it's free, you are the product" tells people that the only way to get good software is to pay money for it. When in reality lots of payed software harvests your data just as much.