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ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

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Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#331

Post by a1369209993 »

rurp wrote: post #209
iav wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chargebacks are way harder in real life than people think. It took me multiple calls, emailing evidence/screenshots, and months to get a $300 charge back processed. That was for a completely fraudulent charge at a bar. The way it was explained to me, banks will only process a chargeback when you have provided evidence of trying to contact the merchant and they refused to provide a refund and couldn’t show a valid con…

I've only made a few chargebacks but each time it was really easy. I've never had to provide any sort of documentation and have gotten the money back quickly each time. The most recent time was with a company that wouldn't honor their refund policy. They were awfully rude over email so I made sure to take screenshots of the policy on their website in case they disputed the chargeback and/or changed the wording on the…

Where did you get your credit card? Name-and-shame is important when dealing with corporations, but so is name-and-praise for the few that actually work correctly.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#332

Post by a1369209993 »

fatbird wrote: post #86
jungturk wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In theory, a competitive market could achieve the same goals, but in practice, it seems like marketplaces often need some regulatory nudging to get over the humps.

Every time we say "in theory a competitive market could achieve the same goals," we find that the entrepeneurs don't have the same goals. The problem isn't the mechanism of capitalism, it's the naive belief that consumer goals and seller goals are aligned.

Actually the problem is more that the theoretical concept of a competitive market bears about as much resemblance to any real consumer goods market as a homogenous sphere of bone, meat and skin in a frictionless vacuum bears to a cow.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#334

Post by hu3 »

ajb wrote: post #181

Despite all this, I currently have more respect for Apple's ethics than most other companies - currently . But if their incentives continue to lead them in this direction, Apple will be the Oracle of 2025. They should actually welcome regulation in this area, because its difficult for a company to change its own incentives.

> Apple's ethics

You know that, contrary to Google, Apple does not offer end-to-end encryption of backups so govs can access it right?

https://www.androidcentral.com/apple-may-have-ditched-encryp...

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#335

Post by ecshafer »

itake wrote: post #218
manfredo wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consoles are much, much narrower in use than smartphones. Most consoles have a few thousand titles, if that. By comparison the App Store had millions of applications. And as you point out, manufacturers are building these consoles at a loss. Apple builds it's phones at a profit. Getting a game approved for sale on a console is much more involved than releasing an App on the App Store, and involves significant manual…

Apple does a manual review of the quality of their apps as well as their content (e.g. if you own a social app that allows users to publish images, they will verify there are no adult images being published and there are systems in place for banning these images.)

That doesn't sound like a good thing to me. Why must we be held to some extra moral laws for the ability to allow ios users to use our software?

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#336

Post by [deleted] »

sascha_sl wrote: post #222

ProtonMail complaining about extortion? That's rich. I was a visionary user for 2 years, and then decided to move somewhere where IMAP/SMTP was a bit easier to do than to run a piece of Go that somehow still required half of Gnome to run. The experience was full of dark patterns. There is simply no way to terminate at the end of your billing period (and I had an annual subscription). If you have custom domains, you l…

[deleted]

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#337

Post by Supermancho »

simion314 wrote: post #170
pwinnski wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ProtonMail had no IAP in their app at all, but offered paid subscriptions on their website. Apple insisted that they offer IAP in the app, and ProtonMail is upset. Here: > "Out of the blue, one day they said you have to add in-app purchase to stay in the App Store. They stumbled upon something in the app that mentioned there were paid plans, they went to the website and saw there was a subscription you could purchase…

The problem is bigger then that. Apple takes a 30% cut(and the fanboys will say it is legal and fair and theoretically Apple could make it 99% and should still be legal) and on top of that cut they are forcing you not to inform the customer about alternatives, YES Apple prevents you to be informed by better reals and deciding for yourself what is better, so you could say that Apple is protecting you because you are t…

> The problem is bigger then that. Apple takes a 30% cut

You have described a different objection, which is not "bigger". It's a different problem people have.

> they are forcing you not to inform the customer about alternatives

That is part of what's going on but you're missing the main issues. They are forcing an app owner to add a purchase that gives Apple revenue if Apple can find ANY other way that the owner is offering to be paid for app features. There was no advertisement or inform within the app at all. Also, you cannot inform the use about WHY the alternative exists (apple gets part of it).

That's how it's worse than even you think.

If Apple thinks people are paying for something, they force you to add something that is preferred that pays them. It's extortion (via a protection racket, "i heard you got an inheritance, be a real same if something happened to your app") or racketeering, depending on how broadly you want to define things.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#338

Post by sokoloff »

a1369209993 wrote: post #331
rurp wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've only made a few chargebacks but each time it was really easy. I've never had to provide any sort of documentation and have gotten the money back quickly each time. The most recent time was with a company that wouldn't honor their refund policy. They were awfully rude over email so I made sure to take screenshots of the policy on their website in case they disputed the chargeback and/or changed the wording on the…

Where did you get your credit card? Name-and-shame is important when dealing with corporations, but so is name-and-praise for the few that actually work correctly.

USAA credit cards have been fantastic for me over a 31 year period. In that time, I can only recall 3 chargebacks and all were decided in my favor quickly and easily. Other service is also great; cash back levels are just “okay” but I’m not giving up convenience and USAA service for 50bps more cash back.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#339

Post by nichos »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #192
Barrin92 wrote: post #167

Apple is nothing else but the digital equivalent of a landlord extracting economic rents from everyone in the ecosystem. It's time to put an end to it, and while we're at it the same goes for all the other platform owners. We (in this case the EU) should give it the same treatment we gave credit card companies. Cap their rates at 1% or whatever so they can cover the operational costs of their stores, stop them from b…

If you're an end user --- don't buy Apple. If you're a developer --- don't build for Apple. Problem solved.

This is the solution. I'm sorry, but an iPhone is not a human right. If you don't like it or the company practice, don't support it Legislation is not the answer here.

Re: ProtonMail CEO calls Apple's forced in-app purchases 'Mafia extortion'

#340

Post by kodah »

enragedcacti wrote: post #171
Hermel wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And your reading of the situation lacks one crucial piece of information: Apple does not allow app authors to forward the “Apple tax” to the user. For example, if a newspaper subscription costs 300$ on the website, the publisher must not charge more than that in the app store event though he only gets 210$ after the “Apple tax”.

This isn't actually the case. That policy was part of a set of changes that were meant to go into effect in July but that Apple rolled back. You're allowed to charge a different price but you can't tell the user that they can get it cheaper elsewhere or that you're paying 30% to Apple.

Man, I thought the first one was damning, but uh, this second explanation is just more plain non-competitive behavior.
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