How is it soap-free if it contains an alkaline agent?
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The key thing that makes something soap is having a polar head and a non-polar tail. These tails can surround a little bubble of oil and give it a polar outside, which lets it mix with and be washed away by water. Because NaOH on its own doesn’t have this lipid tail, a skin product containing it won’t strip all the oil from skin the way that products containing soap do
Because while NaOH is used to manufacture soap, it itself is not soap. Sodium hydroxide functions as a strong base, the purpose of which is to cause a chemical reaction necessary in making soap (literally this reactions is called saponification, because soap). Sodium Hydroxide has many, many other chemistry purposes beyond saponification reactions.
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Soap is not the same thing as alkali. Soap is the result of reacting a base (of which alkali metals and their common bases are an example) with a fat, producing a salt (in the chemical sense) of the base with fatty acids.
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