Apple's kicking us off the App Store unless we give them 30% of all transactions
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Sure, Apple is charging a lot for their platform. It raises anti-trust issues as a duopoly.
The irony here is that the Fanhouse business model itself is exactly what Apple is doing on the App Store, the only difference is that they’re not a monopoly/duopoly power. By that I mean: why would anyone give Fanhouse a 10% cut when credit card transactions only cost 2-3%? Oh, right, so you can get on the platform…sound familiar?
This thread has a taste of hyperbole. It’s overly dramatic.
OnlyFans operates without an iOS app for this very reason. Fanhouse says “fuck Apple” but then does business with them anyway by implementing the surcharge.
If I were an investor I’d probably be having a word with the CEO about publicly hurling insults toward the “store” that’s selling my product.
Also, she’s misrepresenting the Netflix situation. Netflix has to abide by the same rules but she’s saying they get special deals. No, their app says “you can’t sign up for Netflix in the app” for this very reason. Spotify has a free tier and doesn’t handle subscriptions through iOS. Google goes the Fanhouse route and adds a surcharge to iOS-based subscriptions. Prime Video is browse-only last I checked.
I have a hard time sympathizing for a business owner who got $30M+ in a funding round. She can talk about her past life of food stamps all day, but she’s part of the ownership class, just not on Apple’s level of ownership. It feels a little insulting for the situation to be framed as a struggle of the working class.
That feels a lot like marketing: stirring up controversy so that people know who Fanhouse is. It’s a lot cheaper than running ads, isn’t it?
Also, Netflix got some really special treatment: https://9to5mac.com/2021/05/05/netflix-apple-in-app-purchase...
My first assumption by the subtitle was the 'SFW Fan-Creator Platform' essentially a SFW variant of OnlyFans. In which case, OnlyFans was able to function with a browser only setup... why can this not follow for Fan house?
I use Patreon in the browser, checking on posts via email. And don't get me wrong, I dislike the in-ability to sideload applications on iOS, but that's much par for the course with Apple.
If a platform developer doesn’t charge their creators a commission, Apple doesn’t get a cut either – great. But should the developer decide to keep even 1% to run their own business, Apple asks for almost a third of the entire transaction – how does that make any sense?
If I ask you to take your shoes off before coming inside my house, and you tromp on in with your shoes still on and naively expect I'll just be cool with that, don't be surprised if I just kick you out of my house instead. And then don't expect anyone to care when you go protest in the public square about the injustice of me not letting you violate a rule I hold everyone (including myself) to.
(At any rate, didn't Apple actually reduce fees to 15% for smaller companies last year? Isn't that still in effect?)
And even at 15%, Fanhouse would still need to either raise their prices, reduce creator payouts, or run at a loss. Plus, the rules shouldn’t be such that they disincentivize companies from growing.
Frustrating, indeed.
Massive corporations can sometimes make a special deal with Apple.
Small companies, not so much.
Therefore it makes sense for small companies to assume that they will have to follow Apple's rules, whether or not they agree with them.
Did they release a new version or something that they need the eyeballs? One can’t help but wonder…
It’s understandable that the marketplace owner wants to have an iOS app and not just a site like OnlyFans.
And because of Apple, web apps also have severe shortcomings when compared to native apps – such as lack of notification support.
How does the payments work in that case.