Yep, that’s a profound point I’ve been trying to articulate but you’ve found great words for. Independent of #nostr, Sam Harris is incredibly good at what you call “the ask”. He does it in a way where it is clearly authentic, because 1) unlike almost everyone else he’s forgoing advertising revenue and 2) he offers people who can not afford it a free version of his subscriptions.
Discussion
What’s interesting there is that the default is people pay and he forces people to be ACTIVELY disingenuous if they want to cheat his system.