I Asked the Internet's Most Anti-Tipping Community if My Tip Model Was Ethical. They Banned Me.

I spent more time thinking about a $5 tip than I care to admit.

Building Slyce as a solo pet project means the lights stay on regardless. But it would be nice to make them a little brighter. So I spent months wrestling with the right way to ask for support without becoming everything I find annoying about modern apps: paywalls, subscriptions for things you use twice a year, percentage fees that feel like a toll on your own money.

What I landed on was a voluntary tip baked into the settlement flow. Fully optional. No app fee underneath it. Scaled by trip size with the math shown openly on the button. And here's the part I was most proud of: by default it becomes a shared expense split across the whole group. No single person absorbs the social pressure. The group decides together, just like every other expense in Slyce.

The Experiment

I thought I'd done something genuinely different. So naturally I went looking for the toughest audience I could find.

Enter r/EndTipping. 1.1 million weekly visitors who are deeply, vocally, and rightfully fed up with tipping culture. If my model could hold up there, it could hold up anywhere.

I spent time crafting a post that led with the design problem rather than the product. No pitch, just an honest question: does this still feel like tipping culture to you, or does the transparency and group mechanic change things?

The Ban

I was banned within minutes of posting.

The moderator's note: "You clearly have no idea what this sub stands for. You didn't ask for permission to promo your app either."

I wrote back, explained my intent, asked for reconsideration. Then got permanently muted.

The irony isn't subtle. A community built around opposing coercive tipping banned someone for asking if their tip was coercive.

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