Sure, Apple is charging a lot for their platform. It raises anti-trust issues as a duopoly.
The irony here is that the Fanhouse business model itself is exactly what Apple is doing on the App Store, the only difference is that they’re not a monopoly/duopoly power. By that I mean: why would anyone give Fanhouse a 10% cut when credit card transactions only cost 2-3%? Oh, right, so you can get on the platform…sound familiar?
This thread has a taste of hyperbole. It’s overly dramatic.
OnlyFans operates without an iOS app for this very reason. Fanhouse says “fuck Apple” but then does business with them anyway by implementing the surcharge.
If I were an investor I’d probably be having a word with the CEO about publicly hurling insults toward the “store” that’s selling my product.
Also, she’s misrepresenting the Netflix situation. Netflix has to abide by the same rules but she’s saying they get special deals. No, their app says “you can’t sign up for Netflix in the app” for this very reason. Spotify has a free tier and doesn’t handle subscriptions through iOS. Google goes the Fanhouse route and adds a surcharge to iOS-based subscriptions. Prime Video is browse-only last I checked.
I have a hard time sympathizing for a business owner who got $30M+ in a funding round. She can talk about her past life of food stamps all day, but she’s part of the ownership class, just not on Apple’s level of ownership. It feels a little insulting for the situation to be framed as a struggle of the working class.
That feels a lot like marketing: stirring up controversy so that people know who Fanhouse is. It’s a lot cheaper than running ads, isn’t it?