[carliny]

Hey jbm, Tables PM here, your comment definitely resonated with me.

Fun fact: I'm Canadian! :P On your point though: as my own opinion, there's some very smart people here trying to make sure we're doing things in a safe way that protects both our users and our team, and so sometimes we're asked to start small. As a result, we're doing what we can to offer something useful for people and businesses during these covid times, while still respecting the boundaries that we've been given. I, like most PMs, hate red tape, but I also appreciate it for the dangers it protects us from. :)

All that said, we're definitely hoping we can offer Tables to more people in the world, so stay tuned!

[jbm]

I would be very interested to hear more about why, specifically, Canadians (like you and me) are seen as potentially unsafe users.

(Regardless of that, congratulations on your launch and good luck!)

[carliny]

Thanks! Very much appreciate the kind words. :)

Yeah, to give you my perspective on this for a second: the reality is that the rules for how we work with and protect user data continues to evolve and become more nuanced with the different regulations from different countries. Not to mention, taking payments in different countries and currencies has a lot of implications! For every country we release to, there's a bunch of potentially new rules to follow, so it's a lot simpler and safer to do it with just one country first, get it right, and then expand after that. In my experience, there's no particular opinion that users from a particular country are "unsafe," but it's more about whether we have enough time and people to make sure we're doing things right by our users.

Hope that gives you a little insight into this and how we think about it!

[UrSuchAGenius]

Then only allow unpaid users eveywhere else until you sort that out and limit the number of users instead of being US-only.

[carliny]

Hey there, that would certainly simplify the aspect of payment, but to be clear, there are also data governance rules that vary by country, irrespective of whether we're collecting payment or not. We definitely considered that option as well, but ended up going down this path for now. We hope we'll be able to expand access before too long though!