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I wonder what would happen if Facebook and the other megacorps currently objecting loudly to Apple's policies on this topic lobbied a government or two to legis

I wonder what would happen if Facebook and the other megacorps currently objecting loudly to Apple's policies on this topic lobbied a government or two to legislate mandatory disclosure of this 'tax' at point of sale, as well as the restriction on mentioning app developers' other points of sale, overriding any contractual agreements or corporate policies to the contrary. For example, requiring language like this on the final confirmation screen before completing each purchase: "Legal notice: Apple will receive 30% of the price you pay to purchase this app or to make purchases within this app. Apple does not allow this app to mention or direct you to any other way of making purchases from this app's developer which does not involve paying Apple 30%." (Naturally the law would be written not to be specific to Apple or to the 30% number, and a given app store's version of the notice could omit the parts which don't apply to that store's policies.)

Ensorceled 6y ago
Would that apply to Visa/Mastercard/Amex? Stripe/Chargify/PayPal? Would the law require a break down of how much goes to Stripe and how much to Visa? How about currency conversion, would that need to be listed? Bank processing fees would need to be in there too ...
- dahfizz 6y ago
  The difference is that the examples you give directly facilitate a financial transaction, whereas Apple's situation is much closer to a tax where they charge a high fee just because they have the power to do so.
  - richardwhiuk 6y ago
    Apple facilitates the transaction - they provide the store, the user confidence, the marketplace and the users.
    - csande17 6y ago
      It's like the old saying goes: if you buy Apple, you're not the customer. You're the product, and they'll sell you to Facebook for a 30% commission.
      - malka 6y ago
        you misspelled "Google" I think.
    - oscargrouch 6y ago
      So, Apple provides the users? As in; Apple actually own the users as a cattle farm? The users do not have rights at all (like cattle). Not even free speech on the phones they own? The worst thing to me, is the number of people trying to defend this sort of thing, as if it was the most natural thing. Looks a lot like stockholm syndrome to me.. or you know.. remind me a lot how a lot of people under fascist regimes were unaware of how wrong things had turned out.
  - buran77 6y ago
    Putting aside what's the fair amount for such a commission, how exactly are VISA or Mstercard more entitled to charge it compared to Apple? Can I use my VISA card with the burannet network for a cheaper price? Can I just pay nothing because the cash transaction is "free"? They all provide a service, the infrastructure, the network of "clients" and "providers". They should be allowed to charge a fee. The exact amount or conditions is a different topic. On the other hand I'm finding it next to impossible to scrape together any sympathy for Facebook, a company who's a monopoly of its own and who's sole purpose is to covertly collect even more data to monetize from users. The whole Facebook app is a Trojan horse meant to collect as much as technically possible. I'd very much support an initiative where an app would trigger an unblockable notification every time it collected anything resembling personal data without explicit user input. Every time it piked up the location, the SSID of a network, accessed BT, etc. And it should report periodically for how much money was that data sold (under any form). If as a user you want to know exactly how much Apple charged the developer for services, then surely you want to know exactly how much data the developer takes from you and its value.
    - dahfizz 6y ago
      > Putting aside what's the fair amount for such a commission, how exactly are VISA or Mstercard more entitled to charge it compared to Apple? I don't see how their comparable at all. Apple doesn't replace the role of Visa. Some payment processing company is required to process online payments - there's lots of code and infrastructure to maintain to make payments work. Apple does not facilitate the transaction, and the transaction would get done fine without them. Hence they don't have the same level of "entitlement" as Visa.
      - buran77 6y ago
        > Apple does not facilitate the transaction Can you take a step back and look at the bigger picture? Commissions in this world aren't exclusively charged for facilitating a money transaction and nothing more. VISA also has no hand in how a bottle of water is produced, they don't store it in their warehouse, they don't analyze the quality, and they don't ship it to me. But VISA still takes it's share simply because the payment (not product) crosses their network. It's a service, it costs. And I have no say either as a regular customer or a merchant because between VISA and MC there are no real options. Some countries may have a domestic solution but realistically you can't consider changing countries an option. And you may also need to go outside of that network one day. Apple facilitates a transaction only it's not financial. They facilitate the "transaction" of apps and services between users and developers via the Apple platform. They make it possible by building a terminal (the iPhone), a community of users, an infrastructure to host all the apps and intermediate the services. This costs money no matter who does it. If you want to argue that the percentage is too large, that the conditions are unreasonable, that some parts should be free, that Apple is abusing their position, etc. you may have a point. But if you're arguing that Apple shouldn't be allowed to charge for the services because they don't do exactly what VISA is doing, or that VISA shouldn't be treated in exactly the same way, you don't have a leg to stand on. Please take a moment to really think about this and not just vent frustration because that's not constructive. How exactly is VISA different from Apple from the perspective relevant here? And don't say "because Apple doesn't process the financial transaction" again.
  - Ensorceled 6y ago
    Apple directly facilitates the financial transaction as well. I pay Apple for all apps and in app transactions. I get that people are upset with the high fees, but some of these suggestions are, at best, problematic.
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  I think the right line to draw is: "Would the general public be surprised that this cost is included, or by its magnitude, or by the impact on price paid by buyer or price received by seller as compared to other payment or purchasing methods?" Or, looking at this from another angle, "Is there a widely applicable ban on disclosing the fees which is in practice harming the ability of consumers to make properly informed purchasing decisions?" There's no way to draw a perfect line between forced disclosure for transparency purposes and respecting the right of companies to set their own policies. But I'm okay with imperfection, since that's all that reality offers.
- Osiris 6y ago
  Why not? If their fees were transparent maybe that would start a bit of a pricing war. They WANT the cost of their service to be hidden. If I remember correctly, I think their agreements already forbid retails from adding the fee on top of the retail price. It's the same situation.
  - wisemanwillhear 6y ago
    > If I remember correctly, I think their agreements already forbid retails from adding the fee on top of the retail price. That's what I thought, but someone posted something recently which may indicate that this is no longer true. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24302222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24302222
Terretta 6y ago
You think this should apply to Google Play, Xbox, Epic, Steam, and everywhere else? As the judge who ruled against Epic on the breach of contract wrote: ”There appears to be evidence that everyone that uses these kind of platforms to sell games is charging 30%. Whether Epic likes it, the industry and not just Apple seem to be charging that. Right now, Epic is paying Apple nothing. Epic itself charges third parties.” Every company providing any service or good could be required to provide cost/margin accounting, as well as disclaim industry norm practices such as pay-for-placement in grocery stores or advertised retail price limits at BestBuy... does that seem right? What would this 30% notice have said for the billion free downloads of Fortnite? When IAP business model is used to underwrite free to play, should it not also underwrite free to download? Epic can’t have their cake and eat it too.
- pcnix 6y ago
  I think there's two real issues here: * Apple does not allow other App Stores on their platform * Apple does not allow other payment processing or even instructions on where you can purchase things outside of their platform. This reduces even big players like Netflix to just throw up a message that says "You can only use this if you're a memeber", rather than give users a helpful link where they can purchase a membership outside the app. Neither of these are things that Android does, so the case against Apple is significantly stronger.
  - ash_gti 6y ago
    > * Apple does not allow other App Stores on their platform As a consumer, I see that as a feature not a bug. On the Switch, Play Station and Xbox I don't have other stores I can use as well. I don't see how this is a problem as much as it is a feature. The fact that Android allows more than one store is much closer to how a Windows PC allows the user to install apps from anywhere. iOS isn't trying to replicate the PC experience, its not nearly as general purpose as Windows or even macOS.
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  For free downloads, the notice would of course not need to include the part about 30% of the app purchase price. It would still need to include the parts about 30% of the price of IAP and disclose the ban on mentioning any alternatives to IAP that might not include the 30%. It's not typically a norm in other industries that you have no way of buying from the vendor without paying a middleman 30%, and that when such ways do exist, the vendor is restricted from telling you about them. So, for your BestBuy example, if you want to buy from a company who sells there and not pay a cut to Best Buy and their distributors, you can always send a check (for cheapest processing costs) or use a credit card (for still far lower costs than Best Buy's cut) directly to/with the vendor. The vendor gets more of your payment, and you get exactly the same product usable in exactly the same ways as if you had bought at Best Buy. Not only that, the vendor is allowed to charge less than Best Buy charges if you buy direct. Grocery stores are broadly similar, though admittedly fewer grocery vendors are willing to deal directly with individual households (but that's up to them). Apple creates a very different context than the above.
LexGray 6y ago
Apple would probably counter lobby that if one company is called out then all involved in the transaction should be. Facebook should publish their profit off of you for this page view. The seller should show the cut taken by upper management and what is pure profit for any product or service. Why should they be the only one with underwear exposed?
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  Anywhere you're paying money it should be disclosed! Page views are not payments.
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  Any cut of money that developers and users cannot avoid when trying to transact with each other should be disclosed, yes. But Apple's is the only such cut in the entire iOS ecosystem. And it should also be disclosed when companies are forbidden from informing you of a cheaper way to purchase from them. Again, Apple's is the only such restriction in the iOS ecosystem. If other companies fell into the above categories, certainly that would be worth disclosing as well.
elliekelly 6y ago
I don’t understand why they haven’t arranged an iOS “blackout” for an hour or two in protest. Mildly inconveniencing all iPhone users even for a short while would surely cause Apple to change its tune.
notatoad 6y ago
I could see a law like that having unintended consequences for less monolithic players. Sure, for the app store it would result in a disclaimer saying "30% of your fee goes to apple", but for some indie developer selling software on their website it could be "3% goes to paypal, 4% goes to shopify, 2% goes to adnetwork..." and then you've just got an information overload that nobody pays attention to. I think a better solution would be to make these sorts of restrictions on disclosure illegal. IIRC Visa and Mastercard also have clauses in their merchant agreements forbidding you from telling people how much their fees are. If you want to tell your customers exactly how much you're paying the app store, or your payment processor, or any other cost that's part of the final payment, you should be allowed to do that. If you would prefer your customers just see one simple price, you should be able to do that too.
- asciident 6y ago
  This would not be information overload at all. It would be fantastic. I want to know if part of my payment is directed to middlemen, so I could seek ways to pay the author/developer/artist more directly. Airlines have to do this and I have never heard anyone (except the airlines) say that they were bothered by the writing out of taxes and fees explicitly. Utility companies do this (including cell phone companies), and I have never heard anyone saying that those lines of text were problematic. So I'd be very wary of preemptively trying to stop an idea like this, because of a potential unintended consequence which is itself not a big deal (and has not surfaced in similar situations).
- mwarkentin 6y ago
  Or just set it up to apply only to businesses doing > xx million in revenue per year.
- jkaplowitz 6y ago
  That's a case where the developer of the app is selling through their own storefront, not being forced to use a specific middleman with a specific (and large) cut in order to reach the users. Relative to the Apple/iOS situation, that feels qualitatively different. Apple's restrictions are even tighter than those of Visa and MasterCard, some of which have anyway been overridden by laws and/or court settlements. As just the simplest example, Visa and MasterCard have never in my lifetime forbidden offering and advertising cash discounts (even when they've forbidden credit card surcharges). Developers for iOS have no way to sell iOS apps cheaper than through the method facilitated by Apple (which would allow them to increase the app store price to compensate for the 30% fee), nor can they mention to their iOS customers alternative cheaper ways of purchasing content. Nothing in the previous paragraph has an equivalent in the indie developer world.

Ensorceled 6y ago

Would that apply to Visa/Mastercard/Amex? Stripe/Chargify/PayPal? Would the law require a break down of how much goes to Stripe and how much to Visa? How about currency conversion, would that need to be listed? Bank processing fees would need to be in there too ...

dahfizz 6y ago
The difference is that the examples you give directly facilitate a financial transaction, whereas Apple's situation is much closer to a tax where they charge a high fee just because they have the power to do so.
- richardwhiuk 6y ago
  Apple facilitates the transaction - they provide the store, the user confidence, the marketplace and the users.
  - csande17 6y ago
    It's like the old saying goes: if you buy Apple, you're not the customer. You're the product, and they'll sell you to Facebook for a 30% commission.
    - malka 6y ago
      you misspelled "Google" I think.
  - oscargrouch 6y ago
    So, Apple provides the users? As in; Apple actually own the users as a cattle farm? The users do not have rights at all (like cattle). Not even free speech on the phones they own? The worst thing to me, is the number of people trying to defend this sort of thing, as if it was the most natural thing. Looks a lot like stockholm syndrome to me.. or you know.. remind me a lot how a lot of people under fascist regimes were unaware of how wrong things had turned out.
- buran77 6y ago
  Putting aside what's the fair amount for such a commission, how exactly are VISA or Mstercard more entitled to charge it compared to Apple? Can I use my VISA card with the burannet network for a cheaper price? Can I just pay nothing because the cash transaction is "free"? They all provide a service, the infrastructure, the network of "clients" and "providers". They should be allowed to charge a fee. The exact amount or conditions is a different topic. On the other hand I'm finding it next to impossible to scrape together any sympathy for Facebook, a company who's a monopoly of its own and who's sole purpose is to covertly collect even more data to monetize from users. The whole Facebook app is a Trojan horse meant to collect as much as technically possible. I'd very much support an initiative where an app would trigger an unblockable notification every time it collected anything resembling personal data without explicit user input. Every time it piked up the location, the SSID of a network, accessed BT, etc. And it should report periodically for how much money was that data sold (under any form). If as a user you want to know exactly how much Apple charged the developer for services, then surely you want to know exactly how much data the developer takes from you and its value.
  - dahfizz 6y ago
    > Putting aside what's the fair amount for such a commission, how exactly are VISA or Mstercard more entitled to charge it compared to Apple? I don't see how their comparable at all. Apple doesn't replace the role of Visa. Some payment processing company is required to process online payments - there's lots of code and infrastructure to maintain to make payments work. Apple does not facilitate the transaction, and the transaction would get done fine without them. Hence they don't have the same level of "entitlement" as Visa.
    - buran77 6y ago
      > Apple does not facilitate the transaction Can you take a step back and look at the bigger picture? Commissions in this world aren't exclusively charged for facilitating a money transaction and nothing more. VISA also has no hand in how a bottle of water is produced, they don't store it in their warehouse, they don't analyze the quality, and they don't ship it to me. But VISA still takes it's share simply because the payment (not product) crosses their network. It's a service, it costs. And I have no say either as a regular customer or a merchant because between VISA and MC there are no real options. Some countries may have a domestic solution but realistically you can't consider changing countries an option. And you may also need to go outside of that network one day. Apple facilitates a transaction only it's not financial. They facilitate the "transaction" of apps and services between users and developers via the Apple platform. They make it possible by building a terminal (the iPhone), a community of users, an infrastructure to host all the apps and intermediate the services. This costs money no matter who does it. If you want to argue that the percentage is too large, that the conditions are unreasonable, that some parts should be free, that Apple is abusing their position, etc. you may have a point. But if you're arguing that Apple shouldn't be allowed to charge for the services because they don't do exactly what VISA is doing, or that VISA shouldn't be treated in exactly the same way, you don't have a leg to stand on. Please take a moment to really think about this and not just vent frustration because that's not constructive. How exactly is VISA different from Apple from the perspective relevant here? And don't say "because Apple doesn't process the financial transaction" again.
- Ensorceled 6y ago
  Apple directly facilitates the financial transaction as well. I pay Apple for all apps and in app transactions. I get that people are upset with the high fees, but some of these suggestions are, at best, problematic.
jkaplowitz 6y ago
I think the right line to draw is: "Would the general public be surprised that this cost is included, or by its magnitude, or by the impact on price paid by buyer or price received by seller as compared to other payment or purchasing methods?" Or, looking at this from another angle, "Is there a widely applicable ban on disclosing the fees which is in practice harming the ability of consumers to make properly informed purchasing decisions?" There's no way to draw a perfect line between forced disclosure for transparency purposes and respecting the right of companies to set their own policies. But I'm okay with imperfection, since that's all that reality offers.
Osiris 6y ago
Why not? If their fees were transparent maybe that would start a bit of a pricing war. They WANT the cost of their service to be hidden. If I remember correctly, I think their agreements already forbid retails from adding the fee on top of the retail price. It's the same situation.
- wisemanwillhear 6y ago
  > If I remember correctly, I think their agreements already forbid retails from adding the fee on top of the retail price. That's what I thought, but someone posted something recently which may indicate that this is no longer true. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24302222 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24302222

Terretta 6y ago

You think this should apply to Google Play, Xbox, Epic, Steam, and everywhere else? As the judge who ruled against Epic on the breach of contract wrote: ”There appears to be evidence that everyone that uses these kind of platforms to sell games is charging 30%. Whether Epic likes it, the industry and not just Apple seem to be charging that. Right now, Epic is paying Apple nothing. Epic itself charges third parties.” Every company providing any service or good could be required to provide cost/margin accounting, as well as disclaim industry norm practices such as pay-for-placement in grocery stores or advertised retail price limits at BestBuy... does that seem right? What would this 30% notice have said for the billion free downloads of Fortnite? When IAP business model is used to underwrite free to play, should it not also underwrite free to download? Epic can’t have their cake and eat it too.

pcnix 6y ago
I think there's two real issues here: * Apple does not allow other App Stores on their platform * Apple does not allow other payment processing or even instructions on where you can purchase things outside of their platform. This reduces even big players like Netflix to just throw up a message that says "You can only use this if you're a memeber", rather than give users a helpful link where they can purchase a membership outside the app. Neither of these are things that Android does, so the case against Apple is significantly stronger.
- ash_gti 6y ago
  > * Apple does not allow other App Stores on their platform As a consumer, I see that as a feature not a bug. On the Switch, Play Station and Xbox I don't have other stores I can use as well. I don't see how this is a problem as much as it is a feature. The fact that Android allows more than one store is much closer to how a Windows PC allows the user to install apps from anywhere. iOS isn't trying to replicate the PC experience, its not nearly as general purpose as Windows or even macOS.
jkaplowitz 6y ago
For free downloads, the notice would of course not need to include the part about 30% of the app purchase price. It would still need to include the parts about 30% of the price of IAP and disclose the ban on mentioning any alternatives to IAP that might not include the 30%. It's not typically a norm in other industries that you have no way of buying from the vendor without paying a middleman 30%, and that when such ways do exist, the vendor is restricted from telling you about them. So, for your BestBuy example, if you want to buy from a company who sells there and not pay a cut to Best Buy and their distributors, you can always send a check (for cheapest processing costs) or use a credit card (for still far lower costs than Best Buy's cut) directly to/with the vendor. The vendor gets more of your payment, and you get exactly the same product usable in exactly the same ways as if you had bought at Best Buy. Not only that, the vendor is allowed to charge less than Best Buy charges if you buy direct. Grocery stores are broadly similar, though admittedly fewer grocery vendors are willing to deal directly with individual households (but that's up to them). Apple creates a very different context than the above.

LexGray 6y ago

Apple would probably counter lobby that if one company is called out then all involved in the transaction should be. Facebook should publish their profit off of you for this page view. The seller should show the cut taken by upper management and what is pure profit for any product or service. Why should they be the only one with underwear exposed?

Dylan16807 6y ago
Anywhere you're paying money it should be disclosed! Page views are not payments.
jkaplowitz 6y ago
Any cut of money that developers and users cannot avoid when trying to transact with each other should be disclosed, yes. But Apple's is the only such cut in the entire iOS ecosystem. And it should also be disclosed when companies are forbidden from informing you of a cheaper way to purchase from them. Again, Apple's is the only such restriction in the iOS ecosystem. If other companies fell into the above categories, certainly that would be worth disclosing as well.

elliekelly 6y ago

I don’t understand why they haven’t arranged an iOS “blackout” for an hour or two in protest. Mildly inconveniencing all iPhone users even for a short while would surely cause Apple to change its tune.

notatoad 6y ago

I could see a law like that having unintended consequences for less monolithic players. Sure, for the app store it would result in a disclaimer saying "30% of your fee goes to apple", but for some indie developer selling software on their website it could be "3% goes to paypal, 4% goes to shopify, 2% goes to adnetwork..." and then you've just got an information overload that nobody pays attention to. I think a better solution would be to make these sorts of restrictions on disclosure illegal. IIRC Visa and Mastercard also have clauses in their merchant agreements forbidding you from telling people how much their fees are. If you want to tell your customers exactly how much you're paying the app store, or your payment processor, or any other cost that's part of the final payment, you should be allowed to do that. If you would prefer your customers just see one simple price, you should be able to do that too.

asciident 6y ago
This would not be information overload at all. It would be fantastic. I want to know if part of my payment is directed to middlemen, so I could seek ways to pay the author/developer/artist more directly. Airlines have to do this and I have never heard anyone (except the airlines) say that they were bothered by the writing out of taxes and fees explicitly. Utility companies do this (including cell phone companies), and I have never heard anyone saying that those lines of text were problematic. So I'd be very wary of preemptively trying to stop an idea like this, because of a potential unintended consequence which is itself not a big deal (and has not surfaced in similar situations).
mwarkentin 6y ago
Or just set it up to apply only to businesses doing > xx million in revenue per year.
jkaplowitz 6y ago
That's a case where the developer of the app is selling through their own storefront, not being forced to use a specific middleman with a specific (and large) cut in order to reach the users. Relative to the Apple/iOS situation, that feels qualitatively different. Apple's restrictions are even tighter than those of Visa and MasterCard, some of which have anyway been overridden by laws and/or court settlements. As just the simplest example, Visa and MasterCard have never in my lifetime forbidden offering and advertising cash discounts (even when they've forbidden credit card surcharges). Developers for iOS have no way to sell iOS apps cheaper than through the method facilitated by Apple (which would allow them to increase the app store price to compensate for the 30% fee), nor can they mention to their iOS customers alternative cheaper ways of purchasing content. Nothing in the previous paragraph has an equivalent in the indie developer world.