In Another Blow to Meta, Apple Demands 30% Cut From Promoted Social Posts
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Look, I dislike Meta as much as the next guy, but how anyone can argue that this isn't clear antitrust behavior is beyond me.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-08-14/apple-...
And as always, facebook has an option to make their own phone instead of the metaverse nobody is asking for.
To me, Apple is the good guy here. They should charge meta 100%, pass 70% onto consumers to cover the costs of the psychological disorders caused by metas products.
But the entire point is that Apple is now demanding that Meta switch to using in-app purchases for this, right?
And just happen to be mandatory. 30% is indeed higher than the few percent VISA may take.
> And as always, facebook has an option to make their own phone instead of the metaverse nobody is asking for.
Guess we need the Spotify phone, Amazon phone, Facebook phone, ... Just to be clear, I am not defending Meta specifically (I do not use any of their product) but this argument is BS. An operating system used by +25% of the population (higher in the US) shouldn't enforce such fee.
Please do not forget that modern phones aren't just phone. They are a mandatory part of living in society. The "just buy android" or "just don't support iOS" arguments aren't reasonable.
I was with you up to here, if you don’t like what Apple is doing then saying “fine buy the other guy” is a totally reasonable argument, choice is the best argument. Now weather or not Google and Apple are a duopoly in this situation is another issue…
I don’t use spotify so I can’t speak for their platform but don’t they charge outside of Apples ecosystem, and therefore aren’t subject to Apples 30%? I’m an Apple “fanboy”, all my service subs go through them if they accept it. Many subs don’t. So I don’t see the equivalence here.
> They are a mandatory part of living in society.
No they are not. They are a convenience. People can and will continue to live without them if necessary. Even in modern society. Go a week without your smartphone before you say things like this.
My point is that platforms cannot simply make their own phone/ecosystem to avoid clearly abusive behavior. Smartphones are already so much harder to make compared to 10/20 years ago, imagine in 50.
> No they are not. They are a convenience. People can and will continue to live without them if necessary. Even in modern society. Go a week without your smartphone before you say things like this.
Until you try to enter a restaurant where you have to scan a QR code, or when the government decide to track you using an APP because of a certain epidemic. Or when communicating become a struggle because all your contacts are using X third-party chatting service.
Sure, you can still call it a convenience (just ask the person next to you to scan the code, prints paper everyday or do whatever tedious task is the alternative, find new friends or force them to adapt to you) but it is not reasonable. At that point I could say that a house/place to live is only a convenience you could very well survive in a forest. And I doubt that our dependence on smartphone is doing to slow down any time soon.
A real convenience would be a dish-washer, I wouldn't care what horrible things the clear monopoly is doing as I could easily buy another brand without affecting anything in my life. This is not the case with a smartphone, companies are clearly encouraged/forced (there are exceptions) to support as many platforms as they can, hence why electron exist. And you can imagine that social media/chatting service cannot really afford to ignore half the world.
Because Apple doesn't have a social network?
Apple only allowing advertising of its apps in iOS is obviously an issue analogous to what MS was doing.
One would think regulation would come sooner.
> Brilliant. How did they miss this opportunity and double down on VR?
They tried building a phone when Facebook was more trusted, and it failed. A Facebook Phone project in 2022 would almost certainly be doomed to failure.
IIRC, VR was an acquisition and it's more of a wide-open area than phones, so it's more plausible (but still unlikely) they could see success there.
I had no idea that they would completely fail to do a cashgrab and instead make the entire experience either so expensive or so terrible that no one would want to participate in it.
it should be Free/Open Phone in 2022. Facebook is interested in free platform without any garden walls, so no one rent seek from their platform.
Pre-empting the web apps comment. It's not the same, in ways that are both good and bad for both the producer and consumer.
Right, and Ford has a virtual monopoly on the F-150.
It feels a little silly. Like if apple required a 30% cut from AWS because there’s an AWS console app.
Obv they need to split the profits somehow, it does make sense.