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Facebook trying to position itself as friendlier to small businesses than Apple
- gyc 6y agoWonder if an ulterior motive is to hit back at Apple fo Apple increasingly limiting the ability of Facebook and other ad companies to track iOS users.
- gkoberger 6y agoI'd rephrase it slightly – it's a battle for who owns the concept of "identity", and Apple is about to destroy the Facebook Connect button on mobile (which is where most consumers are trending too).
- hugi 6y agoI fight that thing, tooth and nail
- wobbly_bush 6y ago> Apple is about to destroy the Facebook Connect button on mobile Can you elaborate on what or how Apple is doing this? First time I'm hearing about this.
- mbroncano 6y agoMaybe they are referring to the ‘Sign with Apple’ mandatory feature.
- gkoberger 6y ago"Apps that use a third-party or social login service (such as Facebook Login, Google Sign-In, Sign in with Twitter, Sign In with LinkedIn, Login with Amazon, or WeChat Login) to set up or authenticate the user’s primary account with the app must also offer Sign in with Apple as an equivalent option."
- OldHand2018 6y agoBut even if Apple were forced to allow alternative app stores and payment methods, the methods it uses to prevent tracking are built into the OS. So wouldn't they continue to work?
- mark_l_watson 6y agoI thought the same thing. The new OS betas for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS all have very strong non-tracking functionality. This should hit Facebook's, Google's, and more companies' bottom lines.
- lancesells 6y agoI don't think it will. The only way advertisers stop spending on Facebook or Google is if something bigger and better comes along that'll provide a better return. Unfortunately only another platform will stop the money flowing in to this advertising duopoly. The only thing I think it might do is change the distribution of ad dollars between FB and Google.
- pwinnski 6y agoFacebook thinks it will, and issued a warning about their future revenue as a result.
- 3pt14159 6y agoI don't think it is retributive. It could merely be that Facebook didn't think the risk was worth it while they were still easily monetizing Apple device users. Now that the main source of revenue is diminishing, Facebook has less to lose.
- pwinnski 6y agoFacebook just had to warn that their future earnings would be impacted by iOS, so they definitely has motive.
- adamnemecek 6y ago> which Facebook suggests hurts small businesses struggling to get by during the pandemic. I'm sure that's why.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- coliveira 6y agoFB and other companies are trying to get their slice of the 30% fee that Apple has enjoyed in the last few years.
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoWhat THE FUCK are you talking about? They already have their slice. It’s the 70% slice. You goddamn fucking idiots. I’ve happily been living off my 70% slice for over four years. These ungrateful greedy cunts should be happy Apple allows them to earn anything at all. You corporate bootlickers who “feel sorry” for Epic, Facebook, Microsoft etc should all commit suicide immediately.
- camhart 6y agoCan anyone find anything official on this? Is it actually a lawsuit? Or what does "Go After" mean?
- fatnoah 6y agohttps://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/paid-online-events/ https://about.fb.com/news/2020/08/paid-online-events/ > We asked Apple to reduce its 30% App Store tax or allow us to offer Facebook Pay so we could absorb all costs for businesses struggling during COVID-19. Unfortunately, they dismissed both our requests and SMBs will only be paid 70% of their hard-earned revenue. While Facebook is waiving fees for paid online events we will make other fees clear in the product.
- giancarlostoro 6y agoHas anyone used Facebook pay for anything? I haven't ran into any instance of it. My main question is... can you buy a Facebook card with a balance on it and use that to pay? That would be enough to make me consider using Facebook to pay for things. I'm not giving them my debit / credit cards though.
- bishalb 6y agoHow would you add a balance on facebook without a card?
- giancarlostoro 6y agoI guess they are called Gamecards. I guess some people forget but Facebook has had games for ages. They sell cards to pay for in-game stuff.
- giancarlostoro 6y agoBack to my initial point / question: I was asking if you could use those to fund your Facebook account to buy stuff through Facebook, sort of how you can do with Amazon gift cards. What I'm getting at is basically: another avenue to pay for things without (oh this is funny) exposing your personal finances to yet another website.
- ForHackernews 6y agoHere's hoping Apple kicks FB off their app store. People are very loyal to their pricey Apple devices, and Facebook is well past cool these days. I predict FB comes crawling back with their tail between their legs.
- lern_too_spel 6y agoHere's hoping that Facebook pulls Instagram, too.
- otterpop 6y agoNow THAT would hurt, but I feel like it would lead to a similar lawsuit to the Epic Games Vs. Apple.
- lightgreen 6y ago> hoping Apple kicks FB off their app store If they start by kicking what you don't like, then next time they'll kick what you use every day, and nobody will be able to prevent it, because it already became norm. Freedom (including market freedom) is much more important than personal preferences.
- TekMol 6y agoIf I would make the law, I would start with the operating system. Why is there no market for operating systems that run on iPhones? Because Apple actively prevents it. There are only downsides of this. Imagine paper could only be written on with pens from the same manufacturer. Imagine Microsoft would have actively prevented installing browsers other then Internet Explorer on Windows. It might be a good idea to make active anticompetitive measures on hardware illegal. If I would make the law, yeah, I would start with the operating system. There would be no downside of this. Users who want the pure Apple experience would use iOS which is installed by default. And users who want a different OS would install that.
- vlozko 6y agoWould the PlayStation hardware that Sony spends millions on to design and build now must be able to support Xbox’s OS? There’s a lot wrong with such a proposal, much of it being way too onerous on the hardware developers and simply impractical for all the implications associated with requiring hardware be opened.
- JetSpiegel 6y ago> Would the PlayStation hardware that Sony spends millions on to design What? It's off-the-shelf PC parts designed by AMD! This made sense when the consoles were custom chips, but no longer.
- pwinnski 6y agoI find myself hoping that large tech behemoths will "go after" each other and tear each other apart, leaving smoking ruin. Instead, they're fighting over who gets how much of the money. Of course.
- rising-sky 6y agoin this case FB is fighting for the consumer to get all the money, which is a fight worth having regardless of what the cynic might say > Hosts will be able to collect the full ticket price from Facebook users who attend their online events via the web or Android. Facebook says it is using its own payment system on Android and letting developers keep all the money.
- pwinnski 6y agoAgreed!
- dastx 6y agoI'll give 3 months before Facebook starts charging individuals, or starts tracking them.
- natchy 6y agowell that's because FB in is the "growth stage" for its payment platform. Its common for tech companies to provide a service at a discount or free to get traction. No doubt FB would be taking a large cut if it becomes the cash cow that the app store is.
- TAForObvReasons 6y agoIf it does become the cash cow, is 30% the norm? Or would it settle on something closer to 10% or 5%
- actuator 6y agoIt should come down to the credit card/PayPal range I think. So probably 2-3% as at economies of scale these are huge amounts. There are technologies like UPI of India which have a 0% charge but I don't understand who pays for maintaining the common infra and how do UPI apps like Whatsapp Payments/Google Pay earn money.
- ex3ndr 6y agoI bet that huge corporations will get their discount in the end, but all smaller players not locking users even further.
- dotrat1989 6y agoApple already provides a completely free portal for monetization - the safari browser. If Facebook is really hell bent on giving the owners all the royalties then redirect them to the webapp. Apple makes the fastest mobile browser to date. It won't be a bad experience.
- FireBeyond 6y agoThere won't be notifications, there will be PWA limitations, there won't be background activity, you'll need to keep a tab open for it, but it won't be a bad experience. How desperate are we to make sure one of the world's richest company continues to take an extortionate cut for the "privilege" of being on its platform? To be clear, yes, the app store adds value, exposure, payments, bandwidth. But not thirty per cent worth. Why not? For one, the MAS cut is only three per cent, ten times less.
- cma 6y agoFacebook's Oculus Store takes a 30% cut just like Apple, not just of initial sales but also in app purchases including presumably services like this, and one of their big goals is to be even more pervasive than smartphones in general purpose computing, through AR glasses. They also hold a bigger monopoly share of the VR market than Apple does of phones and have a monopoly in a secondary unrelated market (social networks) and major market shares in messaging services (monopoly share in some regions).
- tveita 6y agoOn the other hand you can play VR games from outside the Oculus Store on Oculus hardware, and I would guess the majority of VR games are actually bought on Steam, so there is clearly a choice for both consumers and developers.
- mbroncano 6y agoNot for the standalone headsets
- idlewan 6y agoI don't know if there exist any other commercial store for Quest/Go than the Oculus Store, but for experimentations/betas, SideQuest is an example of how to play things that don't come from the store (https://sidequestvr.com/ https://sidequestvr.com/).
- cma 6y agoSidequest currently requires a developer account which requires signing an NDA with Oculus/Facebook. It is basically sliding through the cracks at their mercy until they expand things (which they have announced but haven't fully detailed; they did say sideloaded apps will still go through a store approval censorship process, and I'm not sure about monetary cut).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ogre_codes 6y agoFacebook wants Apple to help them muscle their way into the lucrative online event planning market. Shocking. Even as they plan to use their monopoly to trash existing run by actual smaller services like EventBright... Apparently all the billionaires are out looking for handouts.