You paid for your computer, too, and Facebook, Google, and many other companies track that.

It's not about the price of the phone. It's about the price of the services you get online—everything from Facebook to HackerNews.

Some of these free websites are subsidized by other means (like YCombinator itself). Some are funded by subscription, with a partial paywall that lets you access a portion of their content free. Others are funded by gathering your data and selling it to advertisers.

Stop treating Apple as if they're the ones who should be responsible for everything under the sun, just because they make iPhones (and truckloads of money).