Ask HN: How do you handle users asking for freebies?

I have a consumer app which is introspection-related, hosted on the Play/App stores. It gets regular customers (~$6k MRR) but I also get a surprising amount of people emailing me privately asking for a free subscription. Because I am really worried about tarnishing my ratings on the stores, I usually give it to them for 6 months or so and ask them not to tell others I gave it for free. Also I do sometimes feel for their stories, but I want consistency in how I deal with users. 50% of the time there is no thank you or positive review given, and the rest of the time they are genuinely grateful. I'm aware this can't scale (unless I actually build some sort of concession system in the app, which I'm unlikely to do), but is giving freebies the right thing/neutral/a bad thing to do at relatively early stages of growing a user base?