Lol remember when they introduced "Premium Beta Program" approximately one year ago?
Lesson everyone should learn from WebNovel's practices: They'll keep testing what's your 'bottom line' and if enough people purchase their crazy schemes, they will assume people support their idea and make it permanent (look at all those "Premium" novels now).
Guess their translators/editors needed A LOT more encouragement by adopting a Patreon-like system via their new Privileged Chapters system. Funny how WebNovel thought it was inappropriate for translation groups to do this via Patreon, proceeded to ban said group/individual, then implement the same exact system with a newly labeled "Privileged" system.
As long as WebNovel gets a cut, it's 100% okay :).