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Comment by adithyassekhar | Hacker News Reader

Don't usually like Apple, but (the inevitable but),

Creators should be happy they're passing the cost to customers. We know they didn't choose to write on substack out of altruism.

If someone thinks you are worth enough to pay 30% more they'll pay. That's always been the case.

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It's still insane that Apple thinks it deserves 30% of your entire subscription cost for simply processing the transaction.

I'm not saying that managing subscription billing has no value, but it's not like what Apple is doing has no comparison; PayPal offers similar subscription services and their cut is less than 10%.

That's the only insane part about this. But they can't go back because numbers must go up.

So if they will always still pay at 30% higher then why not set the price another 30% higher after that and keep going again and again?

They can and it's not wrong. The authors gave it to substack, substack can choose their pricing. That was the deal though, not sure what's the issue here. This is just an ad for a competitor.

Not everything in life is binary the way you portray. They did not choose to use substack out of altruism, nor did they choose to fully exploit everyone as much as possible (they might have gone with apple pay themselves if that were the case). There can be in between zones were people are writing to reach readers and make some money from it, not as much as possible.

The last paragraph is patently untrue, it's used as a clever gotcha for transactive capitalist interactions (assuming it can only be this way and no other), completely ignoring the human elements.

I should make it clear I'm not saying substack was morally in the right here. Nor do I side with apple in any way. I'm pointing the obvious.

Honestly, I just can't see this as the little guy vs the corpo image this post is trying to make. Just two capitalistic ideas fighting one another. The people writing on here must have better paying jobs for their livelihood. The authors are treating their blogs as business which turns off the part of my brain with human emotional concerns.

Life isn't binary, but our choices often are.

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