How do you think a company should pay for your free tear service? If you give your marginal market signal that you are not available to pay for services, companies will use business models that don't rely on that.

Also it's self-absolution to say that even companies you pay snoop on you. There are many serious companies that offer great services for a price and respect your privacy, because it's their interest to do so. Proton, kagi but even Garmin for example.

even then I avoid subs and prefer one-time payments instead

I understand, but this simply doesn't make sense for services that have running costs forever. A pay-as-you-go model or subscription makes more sense here.

In general

that signals that if you want to get my money, you have to do lots more than simply have a mouth to run

It doesn't. It only signals you are not available to pay their current price for that service. For most companies the only option is to get the money from someone else, for example selling your data.

As a user who cares about privacy, we should incentivise healthy business models that allow us to pay with out money and not with our data. Stopping to do this in principle ("I avoid paying for a service if I can") because the CEO expresses an opinion you disagree with seems just fishing for a justification. Of course your money are yours and you do what you want, but don't be surprised when there are no good privacy respecting services to choose from.