So hypothetically, if you paid $5 a month for this service, you would be confident they were NOT selling your information?
Since the answer is obviously no (and in fact, purchasing behavior is the juiciest stuff to sell, be it Comcast, Target, etc), then this tired trope is meaningless.
No. A statement's truth doesn't imply its inverse [1].
It simply means if a company has employees, and they're receiving paychecks, and the money is not coming from you, then it's definitely coming from someone else.
If you are giving them money, it doesn't mean they're not also getting money from somewhere else. But they're less likely to need to do that, especially if it would upset their paying customers.
It's moot anyway because the answer is out there publicly and no heuristic is needed to resolve it.
Now it's obvious why I've got people calling me asking about my recent loan that may have had PPI or that traumatic car crash I was in a few years ago, even though I've never in my life on both fronts. It's my bloody carrier!
If you use Google, shop in a supermarket, use a mobile phone, have the internet, your data is being collected and, in most cases, being sold to "chosen partners for marketing purposes". Everyone's doing it because they can make money from it.