Free only means someone else absorbed the fee but every account created has a cost.
Everyone here is mocking Twitter suddenly applying cost for 'interacting with their network' but deliberately overlook that this is how Hive works also.
The high ups just do well to bullshit users into believing... AND PARROTING... "Fast and Fee-less."
That catch phrases only works because this place has yet to attract any significant activity.
SplinterLands works because it's infrastructure and activity live predominantly on their own tech and use Hive only for record keeping.
Which is why HIVE struggles because it's not at all project (builder) friendly. HF26 might change that, but that's years away.