[maaaaattttt]

Or, it could be the usual VC startup playbook playing out. Offer a great service with great quality for free -> capture users. Once you're happy with your number of users, slowly lower the quality of the free service (meanwhile continue capturing users). Once they start to complain about the quality, introduce a paid "premium" tier that is just the initial service restored to its original quality (with one or two smaller features added to not be too obvious).

You can re-apply the process later to move users to higher tiers.