The question wasn't over $5. The question was over an extra $5, for a total of $10. $5 is basically the upper bound of where I'm willing to experiment.
The question is also very much about whether I am "supporting an independent developer with a tiny donation." A lot of stuff on app stores is spammy, scammy, and I explicitly don't want to support. Our dollars determine where our resources (as a society) go. I don't mind supporting good things, even with donations. I am currently fighting a company over <$3 which they got by fraud, not because it's worth my time, but because it's my civic duty; if I don't, they'll scam another million people.
The audience are HN readers -- entrepreneurs trying to make apps. The point isn't about me as what I ought to be doing (or about convincing others to be like me). The point is to honestly give customer insight, again, with an n=1. If enough people do that, there's a sample bias, but you do get better insight than nothing.
I'm probably going to stop doing that since "customers doing what we don't like" increasingly leads to downvotes. Either I'm communicating badly, people reading are increasingly bad at reading comprehension, or some combination there-of. These posts used to be valued a few years back.
However, as much as it didn't come across, the take-home message was intended to be that if you're running an honest business, you want to (and can) charge me more if you:
1) Clearly signal you're not evil. E.g. my data is treated with respect, you won't scam me, etc.
2) Give me enough information to be able to determine it's a product I want.
That's basic transparency, and a lot of startups lose my business because they screw it up.
