14 points
Its simple greed and disdain for their users that they somehow believe if they begin to charge for something that used to be free the use base will simply eat it and be happy.
The problem is they arr charging for a service with attention (ads) and user info currencies that people do not value as much and cannot be easily quantified. This then makes people complacent and lets companies reach for more information, leading to the current enshitification of the internet