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It's funny how these journalists spend all this time researching these stories but miss a very important point - Google and Apple take a 30% cut off in-app purchases. Governments take sales taxes/VAT as well - up to 25% in some European countries.

It's not TikTok pocketing 70%.

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I don't think that's correct.

Apple's cut is taken at the time users buy TikTok coins, not at time of donation/withdrawal. You get more TikTok coins for the same amount of money on web because they don't have to give Apple/Google a cut. So once your fiat is converted to a TikTok coin it's already "clean", meaning all app cuts have been accounted for.

The giver buys 100tiktok coin for 100usd. The receiver gets 100tiktok coins from the giver. For google/apple to get there 30% cut, the 100tiktok coin can't convert back to 100usd.

I think their system works like this:

You buy two coins for $0.02 and they give one diamond or $0.01 to the recipient. This looks like a 50% cut but after App Store fees and taxes it's more like 25%.

Still bad but not 70% as implied in the article.

> BBC staff in London sent TikTok gifts worth $106 from another account. At the end of the livestream, the balance of the Syrian test account was $33.

So you think this is because of quantization at the level of cents in the unit of account?

> while the company takes up to 70% of the proceeds, a BBC investigation found.

I’m thinking it’s not possible for TikTok to take 70% of the proceeds if there’s App Store fees and sales taxes / VAT involved.

But please show me the math if I’m wrong.

This point is not important.Not even comparable.

One is a purchase in the shop, another one is a charitable donation. And google does not take 30% from charitable donations.

I missed this when I read the title. TikTok does not have a charity feature and the money in this case is not going to charitable organizations. They are regular live streams where people are asking for money and watchers are giving money through a standard "tip" feature of live streams.

TikTok gifts are not charitable donations. They are in-app purchases. For every gift you buy, streamers earn "diamonds" which can be withdrawn for cash.

You cannot built this kind of functionality without giving Google/Apple a 30% cut, plus they collect sales tax and VAT on your behalf.

I'll give you an example. If I sell an in-app purchase for a price of £1 in the UK, £0.17 go to the government, and £0.25 to Apple/Google. I'm left with £0.58!

That's the point and the title is misleading. If you buy goods from an organization because you'd like to support their cause, that's not a donation but a simple purchase. Even though 'donation' is not mentioned here, it is implied in many of the comments I read in this thread. But that's far from what it actually is and how the transaction is worked. The story would actually be outrageous if some vendor took x % from a 'donation'. But that's not the case here. These are 'purchases' with the intention of helping someone. Nevertheless, the intention doesn't matter at all here. If you want to donate, you'll have to look for a place to 'donate'. And then your transaction will be handled accordingly (hopefully).

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