151–160 of 234 posts
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The point is Apple have a monopoly. Your supply/demand point is facile. For small indie developers 30% is an outrageous cut. That is what the complaint is about.
Apple has a "monopoly" over the app store as much as Disney has a monopoly on Disney movies.
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You are conflating freedom of speech with the US first amendment. Freedom of speech is a principle. It applies to private companies as well. Voltaire didn't say "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, so long as it's not on Twitter, Facebook, &c in which case I'll beat you to death myself because private companies are entitled to censor their own platforms". What's the poin…
Private companies can't arrest you, put you on trial, sentence you to prison, or kill you. Government can. That's the point.
In many US jurisdictions they can do the first (and so can essentially everyone else.) They also do the last, often without legal consequences, though not as the outcome of a judicial process (but in civilized countries, government can't do that as the outcome of a judicial process, either.)
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Those cuts are egregiously large, IMHO. Those platforms should be hacked into pieces until competition forces them to fall (or have their pricing regulated like a utility's).
I have a mac app which is exclusively available on the App Store, so I pay 30% of my revenue to Apple. I could spin up my own system but then I have to build out payments (credit card processing fees), distribution, updates, beta testing, and figure out discoverability. In the end, my app isn't big enough to build these things out myself, but at least if I wanted to I could. Different story on iOS.
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Alternatively you could pay to promote your work on facebook which you will have to do anyway and take payment on patreon.
Which will be promptly banned and your Facebook privileges revoked. Like YouTube tries to. Welcome to walled gardens.
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Even 30% of the revenue, while most taxation is based on the profits only.
They've learned their lesson - taxing profits means everyone will pull off bullshit accounting tricks to make their profits as close to 0 as possible.
As a content creator that charges $25/mth, would you rather: 1. Patreon - 500 subs 25x500x.95=$12,500 rev 2. FB - 5K subs 25x5000x.70=$87,500 rev
10x growth doesn't seem unrealistic given FB's scale and $$ motivation to grow your audience
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You are conflating freedom of speech with the US first amendment. Freedom of speech is a principle. It applies to private companies as well. Voltaire didn't say "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, so long as it's not on Twitter, Facebook, &c in which case I'll beat you to death myself because private companies are entitled to censor their own platforms". What's the poin…
Private companies can't arrest you, put you on trial, sentence you to prison, or kill you. Government can. That's the point.
Liberapay takes 0% https://liberapay.com/ It's European non-profit and open source. It's funded by the donation on it's own platform.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19270786 European non-profit is not the same as American non-profit. So i made a new item for liberapay, since I thought it was worth it. Also, I would much rather see Liberapay on the frontpage of HN than Facebook "fan subscriptions"... We have enough multinationals that try to claim 30% on top of someone else's work.
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The US does have freedom of speech at the federal government level; i.e. the government is not supposed to repress speech. However, it appears the parent is intentionally conflating freedom of speech and a private entity's right to censor their own platform. One has literally nothing to do with the other; private entities in the US and abroad are largely free to run their platforms as they choose, including censoring…
You are conflating freedom of speech with the US first amendment. Freedom of speech is a principle. It applies to private companies as well. Voltaire didn't say "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it, so long as it's not on Twitter, Facebook, &c in which case I'll beat you to death myself because private companies are entitled to censor their own platforms". What's the poin…
You know how you can say whatever you want on the street, but I can make you leave my house for whatever reason I want? Same idea. Free speech is only a coherent concept in public spaces. Otherwise my right to private property would be impaired by your right to say whatever you want in my dojo.
As for your last question...I mean, really? "What's the point?" Are you actually asking this in good faith? Go take a look at any country which doesn't have freedom of speech or freedom of the press. How about being able to say what I want without being disappeared in the middle of the night? If Twitter bans someone for hate speech you honestly believe that's comparable to something like Khashoggi's assassination?
You're quoting Voltaire like the stakes for private and public censorship are the same but that's utterly ridiculous.
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Very careful with this option, as it's based in the EU which means free speech is not considered; that makes it a very dangerous option for podcast and youtube creators, opinion bloggers, etc.
Do not worry; all these companies are private enterprises, so in US, freedom of speech doesn't apply anyway. Patreon/Paypal/Visa/Mastercard/Twitter/Facebook will drop you like a hot potato, once you publish something mildly controversial.