I learned this rule early in the internet, “paying doesn’t solve the problem.”

I first tried to pay as I wanted to support. But it just let to more ads and more upsell and more bother. It was a more pleasant experience to not pay and see the basic ads than paying and getting bombarded with “dear prepend, buy a longer subscription/gift a subscription/change your password/do you love us/etc”

Once the algorithms learned that the most likely buyer is a previous buyer and how to increase incremental revenue it started sucking more.