The “platform economy” is just another term for digital landlords.
Fuck 'em.
Techno feudalism is the term, look it up
Oh I know, I just thought using landlords would be a more concise term since most people don’t know the term techno-feudalism as widely.
I’ll definitely try to incorporate it in my writing more though, it’s a term that I think should be known much more widely.
look up en passant
lol, the irony is patreon is also a platform. Its platforms all the way down. They take 12%. If Apple wanted to be the good guy, they’d take 30% of patreon’s 12%.
Middle man skimming off the top.
Pretty sure they are the top man
If digital platforms didn’t add any value, every android app would just be available for sideloading on the dev’s website. Not that I agree with Apple’s pricing tactics, but running and moderating a marketplace isn’t free
Landlords don’t create the value themselves, they are an intermediary for value.
Platforms don’t create the value themselves, they are also an intermediary for value.
The value app stores provide is reach, but they don’t get that value without the developer’s effort. The only thing they provide is the network effect, which is nothing more than a consequence of making themselves the default option for users of these phones.
For the same reason that landlords don’t provide inherent value, but still capture so much of the housing market, platforms don’t provide inherent value, but still capture so much of the app market.
They push out competition. If a landlord buys a house, there’s one less house for someone to buy. If an app store brings in another user, there’s one less user that will use other means to acquire an app.
I myself primarily use alternative means of installing apps. Direct APK downloads, or F-Droid. The only reason these exist is because the apps I use are specifically targeting a privacy-conscious user base that is likely to be using alternative means to acquire apps in the first place.
Because these platforms immediately monopolize user acquisition by bundling themselves with the OS, they directly fight any pressure to use alternative means, which makes most app developer efforts to create alternative means not worth the time.
App stores can and should be free. Without an app store, Apple and Google would have barely any market for their phones.
These platforms exist to give the hardware & OS itself value. The only reason these fees exist is because they are monopolies.
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Yeah, I actually think this policy is 100% correct and, if more services did this instead of eating the costs, we could have a real discussion about the harm caused by arbitrary fees.
It will likely result in Apple seeking a special deal with Patreon to avoid this mess though. It’s really not a good look for Apple especially as they cater themselves to the creatives market.
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I mean, sure, but this counteracts all that money they spend when most artists make their money on Patreon or similar (if they make any money at all, frankly.)
Until recently, apps were not even allowed to charge less outside their apps than on the app store or to link to outside stores.
We should thank the European Union for that.
Thanks European Union
Merci, union européenne
Hey, let’s do it in all official languages of the EU. So far we’ve had English and French.
The EU (where I live) is a bureaucracy nightmare sometimes, and is often far too removed from citizens. It has a gazillion problems, but as far as data protections and customer rights it does some things half right.
I live in the EU and I’m happy we have it, because otherwise we wouldn’t have many consumer protection laws (either because my government is stupid or because we wouldn’t have enough leverage as a single country).
Many things we now take for granted are only possible thanks to the EU, like the 2-years warranty on electronic/household products.
They were allowed to charge less, just not mention or link to it in any way. Proton has been doing it for a while that the Apple in-app purchases are roughly 30% higher.
Being as this is very similar to the apple epic legal fight that epic lost earlier this year, I doubt apple will make a deal. My understanding is that patreon can cave, choose to pay 27% commission, or make their own store.
Though skimming the news around epic’s attempts to make a store, you “can” make a store in compliance with EU and UK laws, but apple made it kinda impossible to actually do and epic is fighting it in court again?
So patreon seems to have read the lay of things and said I guess we just have to make the best of a shitty situation and communicate everything to try to limit the pain.
It’s almost like apple feels like they have the power to do whatever they want because they’ve created a market where they don’t have competition…
Yeah this is well overdue
This is a given for many kinds of services. Always purchase subscriptions on another device or direct through their website - never use your Apple devices’ app store.
I’m just worried for the content creators on patreon. Their choices are a significant reduction in income, jacking up prices and pricing out some of their patrons (thus reducing their income), or if patreon pulls from apple there’s a significant reduction in visibility and additional hurdles (thus reducing income).
So it seems that no matter the outcome, creators suffer the consequences of the Apple tax.
Fuck apple. Rotten to the core. Class action lawsuit in the very least.
Vote. We need House, Senate, and President to not be corporate fascists so that we can impeach at least 2 or 3 supreme court judges, replace them with rational human beings, reverse the overturning of Chevron Deference, and then let a stronger FTC gut these fucking companies.
Self dealing, competition buying, corporate fascists. The lot of them.
What we can work on is awareness. If iOS users are aware, they can choose to simply go to the website directly and make the purchase, instead of using the app. They can still use the app for consumption.
Yep, that’s what everyone I know with Apple devices have always done. I used to have a Nexus 7 (rip) and an iPhone, and the prices on the App store were always higher than the prices on Android Market (rip).
I’m wondering why it’s being pointed out now by everyone, but I’m not gonna complain if it leads to some sort of price parity regulation across platforms.
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It’s all about trust. The problem is that people trust Apple not to steal your credit card information and to honor subscription rules etc. You probably trust the independent platform a bit less, such as many of those scammer platforms who might even charge people more than they should by “mistake”, then have an awful process to get reimbursed etc.
In that sense, most people will always prefer Apple to manage these things. Everything’s then in one place, and you trust that once you cancel it you won’t be charged again.
As an example, I had a Netflix subscription and after I cancelled it, I’ve got 2 or three emails saying “Thank you for reactivating your subscription” which I didn’t do. I suspect they make some pop up that my mom tapped without noticing, but that definitely shouldn’t happen without my password. I could only solve the problem by adding a second payment method (which doesn’t work) and only then it allowed me to delete my previous credit card data.
Someone’s looking to get in on some anti-trust action.
I thought Apple’s app store practices were found to be legal in the Epic Games trial? (unlike Google’s)
Which is kinda ridiculous since Apple’s practices are what Google does but worse.
To paraphrase an analysis that I read awhile ago, Apple’s practices were found to be legal because Apple applied the rules unilaterally whereas Google would make backroom deals to alter the rules on an app-by-app basis.
Please take this with a grain of salt because 1) IANAL and 2) it is the middle of a workday break and I didn’t take the time to search for a source, just basing this off of memory.
If you want I can research this after work to provide sources and update my comment.
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Mike Jones.
I’m okay with paying 30% where the return on investment is worth it. Both the Appstore and Google Play do literally nothing for you, except distribution, and payment processing. These really don’t deserve to take such a big cut, and I don’t really want to hear any more excuses in their favor
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It also is likely costs that are having to be done anyway because of web based sales or other distribution channels. So it’s even worse that Apple and Google act like they’re providing so much when they’re literally just preventing businesses from using their existing infrastructure.
I’ll still say that when it comes to developers, Apple is a much better experience than Google.
On the App Store you can appeal if your app is rejected and you have an actual human on the other side to explain you what are the issues.
On the Google Play, anything goes usually, but later if your account gets flagged by their automated system, you might 1) get a generic email with no explanation and a threat that you should fix it or the app will be taken down and your account get 1 out of 3 warnings; 2) get your account simply banned without explanation, losing all your services associated with Google forever with no appeal or anything you can do; 3) have your Google account simply disabled for supposedly being “associated” with some other account that was banned.
Many of these horror stories can be found on the Android development subreddits and I suspect this is the result of the Play Store being a big target of malicious or scam apps constantly.
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Dunno about Apple but Google does a very bad job of monitoring the Play Store. Outright malicious apps are one thing and deceiving apps are other. Latter is a very big problem. Low quality apps minced with in app purchases/subscriptions that are carbon copies of each other.
Google arguably does a worse job of curating the Play Store (sponsored results) and has a non existent support.
30% is more or less the industry standard. Whether it’s a physical store or an online store. They almost all take a 30% cut.
30% is a reasonably cut for transactions that take place in your store, the main complaint I see about Apple and their store and the cut they take is that they want 30% of any money that goes through any of their devices at all, not just their app store. Relevant here, they are charging the 30% fee for people’s memberships to creators on the platform, a process that is wholly separate from Apple’s ecosystem unless the user is using apple pay to pay for it.
30% is a reasonable cut for the distribution of software for which almost all revenue is marginal profit. When it’s a transaction for services that cost money to provide (like Uber or online shopping) or a transfer of money on behalf of someone else (think Venmo or PayPal or just a regular banking app), a 30% cut of the whole transaction doesn’t always make sense.
Apple recognizes this and doesn’t take a 30% cut for those types of services. But they don’t always categorize things correctly. Patreon is something like PayPal, whether the app owner takes a a small cut of each transaction, so paying 30% represents a huge cut, like 10x as much as they make.
Apple (and Google and Steam) are taking a software distribution cut for a service that more closely resembles payment processing, which is usually a 1-3% fee, not a 30% fee.
and Steam
Exactly what is Steam doing now? AFAIK only charges fees sales of games through the Steam platform, from which developers get a LOT of value.
The fee will only apply to memberships purchased on Patreon’s iOS app starting November 4th, 2024.
This isn’t about that, Apple hasn’t fully committed to those plans. This is about their existing rules which have applied to a long ass time.
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Steam DRM is not mandatory.
Reminds me of the monty python sketch, “what have the romans ever done for us? except sanitation and roads and canals and public health” lol.
Steam gives devs a huge marketing presence that smaller devs simply wouldn’t have otherwise, it gives countless high bandwidth distribution servers that automatically scale to demand, you can integrate the largest PC social community for matchmaking or other multiplayer features, you get a community page where people can post fan content or mods, etc.
That is worth way more than 30% to most devs. The only ones who it’s not worth it for are huge companies like Blizzard and Epic who can manage all that themselves, hence why they’re pretty much the only ones who don’t sell games on Steam.
I mean, that’s kinda exactly what I said, Apple taking a 30% cut of any transaction that occurs on their devices/on apps downloaded from their store makes no sense, though I will add that Patreon takes a 8 - 12% cut depending on how much support they give the creator. As far as Steam goes, to my knowledge they don’t take a cut out of in game purchases, only purchases that occur strictly on their platform. (Also I don’t think they charge everyone the 30%)
I mean, that’s kinda exactly what I said
Yes, I’m agreeing with you and expanding on that, showing where the lines blur. Apple wants to get 30% of everything when it’s only reasonable (and supported by historical practice) to get 30% of actual purchase of software. The history of the Apple App Store is an expansion beyond the original, relatively reasonable 30% cut on that narrow category, quietly spread out to a bunch of new categories that don’t actually resemble the previous category.
Apple knows they can’t take a 30% cut of every Uber fare or Doordash order or Amazon purchase of physical goods, and they don’t try to. It’s the categories in between where their policies start to look arbitrary.
And now Patreon in the crosshairs shows just how twisted it’s gotten. Like I was saying, I see Patreon as something more like PayPal than, like, Netflix.
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This is not about the App Store service’s quality, this is about option. They could charge 50% for all I care, if we had the option to buy iOS apps from another store other than Apple’s.
i’m so glad i’m on android
This couldn’t have come at a worse time, given their DOJ suit.
patreon app store.
Is apple still blocking apps from telling users they can subscribe outside of the app store?
I.e A message on check out that says “You can save 30% if you subscribe directly the website. Apple charges a 30% processing fee for using Apple subscriptions, please just subscribe on the website.”
The oportunity was there, so I took it. What else would I link to? Actual pateron?
I believe this is related to that, yeah.
I wonder how quickly Apple would come up with new bullshit if apps started providing an interstitial page with a breakdown.
Membership (goes to creator): $4.75 Patreon fee: $0.25 Fee for using iOS (goes to Apple): $1.50 -- Total: $6.50
So if I read that correctly, Apple wants a cut from Patreon’s iOS app, not all Patreon creetors that have iOS apps. People still have the option of contributing to Patreon directly via their website, or even their mobile website.
Apple takes a 30% cut from almost all transactions made within all apps installed from the App Store (which is literally all of them) and you’re not allowed to advertise e.g. a website to avoid the tax. Patreon rightly passes the 30% onto consumers, as should all apps. Regardless of their own bad practices, Apple needs to be held accountable.
Unless you’re selling physical goods (e.g. Amazon or eBay)
Thank you for the clarification, as I said, there are exceptions which are few and far between for the rule, with this being a huge carveout I missed - selling physical goods is exempt.
But if you want to pay for in-game goods (subscriptions, gems, skins, whatever) or an app outright Apple takes 30%. I know they charge Netflix the 30% for their subscriptions, but wonder about e.g. tickets/passes for transit.
No, tickets and passes for transit or events are exempt (I know it because I work in the industry). Unless they’re tickets for digital events (such as remote workshops), in that case you should pay the 30% fee.
Gee, thanks!
Close. They want a cut from all users that use the Patreon IOS app. Since they can’t quite stretch that far, they’re insisting that Apple IAP functionality be built into the app and it be offered to the users. And as before, they can’t tell the users that it’s cheaper, or even available, elsewhere.
