Since no-one reads newletters properly, I bet at least one of your "customers" thinks they are paying for access to some videos which they will intend to watch at some point in the future, and will be pretty pissed in the future when they discover they've been paying for months and those videos are still not available.
The shady part is doing the pivot without doing another opt-in. It's a classic bait ("Subscribe to get access to videos") and switch ("Continue paying to get access to a community and the promise of plans to make said videos in the future").
If that's the case, I'm happy to issue a full refund, no questions asked.
There's a major difference between trying to scam someone and pushing the boundaries to validate (and de-risk) an idea. If our ideas are shit, I will never take someone's money for that (hence the no questions asked, full refund).
No one does, this is the internet. They found something wrong with your project and they're going to jump on it like flesh hounds. No one's going to mention a small detail like that you never took anyone's money or even that you never had malicious intent.
These are Hacker News commenters, prototypal white knights eager to show off their perfect moral compasses, disregarding any opportunity for reflection or relativism.
I wonder how many of these people have actually built something and made a living from it? Or tried? Or spent months building something only to find out no one wanted it?
No, it is not something I would have done, but I really understand the need to have some idea of what's going to work, and could see how one might go too far in pursuit of that.
I have done all of those things and I maintain the view that there is no reasonable justification for deliberate deception in commerce. A fortiori amongst startup entrepreneurs, who should be doing their best to foster collegial relationships with one another based on mutual trust and confidence - ironically, one of PublicBeta's own goals.
The shady part is doing the pivot without doing another opt-in. It's a classic bait ("Subscribe to get access to videos") and switch ("Continue paying to get access to a community and the promise of plans to make said videos in the future").