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Comment by spcebar | Hacker News Reader

Twitter not taking a cut is surprising and welcome.

They know there will be an uproar if they take a cut today. But once everyone is used to using it they'll introduce their cut and make money.

Like when instagram started they promised they'd have no ads

It's shit like this that makes me wish people would switch to Mastodon, but it won't happen because the "big names" aren't on there. Wil Wheaton tried, but got bombarded with an endless slew of "Shut the fuck up Wesley" until he quit. The cynic in me thinks this could have been a coordinated effort by Twitter to try to keep people from leaving for greener pastures, but that's probably just my tinfoil hat showing.

You don't need a conspiracy if your success relies only on people on the internet being scumbags. Unfortunate reality is that you'll always win taking that side of the bet.

It's much more likely that Mastodon is just full of the sort of people who get kicked off all the centralised platforms.

Mastodon is that, but also the opposite. It literally depends entirely on which instance you choose. There are servers of all kinds, here are some listed on their site:

General (41) Regional (29) Art (7) Music (2) Journalism (1) Activism (7) LGBTQ+ (7) Gaming (5) Technology (15) Furry (3) Food (2)

And if you find you get a lot of the toxic variety coming from a certain instance, you can block it entirely.

Keep in mind that if Twitter took a cut of tips, that would automatically trigger the App Store's 30% in-app payment tax for any user who tips on their iPhone. (According to App Store rules, if an in-app payment goes 100% to the creator with zero platform cut, then Apple foregoes the 30% fee.)

It's similar to why Clubhouse isn't currently taking a cut of creator payments: they can't do it without paying the App Store fees.

Ah, the App Store tax. The gift that keeps on giving... or taking, whatever.

In my experience it's better to shop around payment processors to see if they are willing to take less than the 2.9%, and keep that markup to yourself.

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