You could not make this argument even 10 years ago, when you could absolutely make a sites on any of wordpress, tumblr, yahoo or blogspot completely free. These days there are even more choices ranging from WYCIWYG (Squarespace & the like) to absolutely free full CI/CD-ed platforms (heroku, Zeit, GitHub pages...). It's not like there is a duopoly on web hosting.
But I guess the more important aspect of the word "free" is that no one could gatekeep you from making a website, unlike app stores where there is a review process.
Tell me how making and hosting a website is absolutely free.