Hi. I have been a VIP user here for 9 years.
I always paid for VIP in bitcoins. Originally I used the built-in “Coinbase integration”, and when that was removed I kept renewing it via support tickets, for 3 years each time.
My “VIP” is about to expire again. This time, support told me the site no longer accepts bitcoin. That’s a shame, but okay I guess. Still, I would like to pay without KYC. I would rather not link the rich data the site already has about me to my real name. I see you accept credit cards, Cash app, or some horrible bank integration thing. And you want me to subscribe, and keep pulling money. I was happy with push-, not pull-type transactions.
Why don’t you accept some kind of gift card? Or bitcoin or monero?
Do you actually want toxic personally-identifiable information, or do you just want to get paid?
I would hope the latter.
If you produced some kind of gift cards, that would have dual use: it would also let members gift VIP to friends.
And it would allow me to keep supporting you perhaps via a reseller.
Originally I started paying for VIP simply to support the site, I have not cared about any of the extra features.
Seeing there is no good way to keep supporting you and that I will have to let my VIP period expire, I quickly read through the current set of VIP features.
I see restrictive limits have been introduced to list sizes, and apparently my watchlist of 600 items is now considered super-mega-giga long and hence a paid feature, huh.
When I started writing this post I figured if you don’t want my money without my KYC data, I will just keep the money but keep using the site without “VIP”. But now I see if I want to keep using the site I kind of need to pay the VIP.
Inertia has kept me here for all this time, but in the meantime I started self-hosting most other services I use. I guess I can find an open source alternative and run yet another docker container on my home server.
In short I am asking whether you accept money in a privacy-preserving way or if I should look into migrating to a self-hosted solution.
Thanks for these past years.