Please Apple, make this happen.
Popular apps have been exempt from these rules since the beginning of time - not that I agree with this.
would it be weird/embarrassing for Apple?
That’s what “popular” means, in this context.
That’s how they make their decisions.
But Patreon does have a web version but I am not sure how many people prefer web sites in Apple ecosystem especially on Ios so I do find the whole thing to be a bit weird because this ~30% cut essentially seems to rip off of creators in some sense.
Hell I'd argue more people are upset about the lack of an OnlyFans app than Patreon. OF has way more brand-recognition (outside of tech) than Patreon.
Epic Games went to federal court over this with Apple like 40 fuckin times - a related fun read for you.
2. The costs for this would be ridiculous. I have probably sent over a million public messages on Discord in the decade I've been using it. $10,000 is a pretty steep fee to do some chatting.
3. This is essentially a digital ID scheme with extra steps, and requires ceding privacy completely to communicate on the internet.
I understand your comment was probably an off-hand joke and not to be taken seriously but if you think about it for very long it becomes apparent that it would actually make the problem worse.
Junk mail isn't that expensive in the grand scheme of things. And I'd be surprised if the margins for this was so high that a mere 1 cent transactions wouldn't deter so many of them.
I see it the opposite. You will never stop truly motivated propaganda from spreading its messae. They put millions into it and the goal isn't necessarily profit. But you stop a lot of low time scammers with a small cost barrier.If only because they then take a cheaper grift.
Like my point is that atleast for amazon/yt, these bots usually cost this much ~$0.03 to buy once.
Then we probably see a scammer buy many of these accounts and then (rent it?) on their own website/telegram groups to promtoe views/ratings etc./ comment with the porn ridden bots that we saw on youtube who will copy any previous comment and paste it and so on.
So technically these still cost 3 cents & scammers are happily paying the rate.
Once upon a time it was expensive to send messages and now it's cheap.
I remember Verizon wireless at the time had a plan with unlimited nights and weekends for calls and texts, so my friends and I would message each other like crazy on the weekends when it was free. Got grounded when I got my first girlfriend in high school for racking up the phone bill from text messages and promptly got my phone taken away.
And yes, I do legalese details of that are much more complex. But it just makes no common sense.
I'd love to be proven wrong, but it feels like over the past couple of decades we've gone from clever guys coming together with an idea and starting companies like Microsoft, Google, and Apple, to celebrating buyouts of startups by large behemoths—that's how low the definition of success has dropped. Is competition law even a thing anymore?
The overuse of dependencies is a problem, sure, but it's completely unrelated to "over-unification". Every ecosystem with a built-in package manager suffers from this, be it Node.js, Python, or Rust, to name a few. In fact, it's not even the package manager, it's the ease in adding new dependencies. Go demonstrates that pretty well.
Apple also sits on a board that approves new web technologies for standards formalization, so they can squash adoption of anything that might make web browser APIs as capable as a native application, so that they can force people to make native apps where they can extract a percentage from it (they can't do that with a web application). Rather than work out reasonable ways to support things other browsers allow, they just say "no thanks" and then there is no standard allowed to move forward.
It's extremely abusive and anti-competitive. I hope the DOJ continues to pursue litigation against Apple for this and many other things.
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1344546/dl?inline
This would be an entirely different conversation if Patreon was still allowed to use other payment systems outside of Apple's IAP service. No, this is Apple forbidding competitors on their platform.
- the devs all need to get licesnses and specific hardware to develop for IOS
- They spin up their own servers to manage all the finances coming in
- They work on their payment processing solution separate from Apple. And Patreon still pays some fee to apple over the app.
- the model of Patreon only takes 5% off of creators, so that's not enough for Apple. It also wants a cut at the customers of the website who provide services. Customers not beholden to any one platform.\
- And to force them to do that, they are kicking the other processing plan off as an option, leaving only them to work with.
And it's somehow not evil? If I let a friend sleepover at my apartment, is the landlord in the right to demand a day of rent from them too?
But then again to avoid a 30% fee.. probably worth it
Markets without competition degenerate. Markets are also artificial and always rely on government enforcement to exist - Apple sues people who try to get around its market manipulation. You just prefer that governments help enforce trusts and destroy competition that those trusts denote as unfair.
Because the government is the only body equipped to create and enforce consumer rights laws. Do you think we'd have refund policies if the government didn't regulate them?
>then they are surprised when a new government gets to power and uses this new regulation/capability against you.
Okay. How is the act of forbidding platforms from banning alternative payment processors going to backfire?
Apple is already getting sued by the DOJ for their abusive business practices. They should be regulated.
Political power is absolutely critical to help workers over the interests of the elites, deciding to actively cede this power is stupid because we do know who fills the vacuum and it's mostly evil people that want to continue to do evil things.
Please remember that every right we the people have was never given to us. It was forcibly taken by violence and force from those that abuse authority.
Advocacy is by far the worse way to enact real change. Organizing, literally expanding the base of political power, is the only way to change society.
People have forgotten how much power they hold and can yield, luckily there are those that do realize this and frankly I'm glad I spend my limited time on earth with those people than with your lot (those that complain but never do).
Was all Apple since the iBook G4. Bought a Pixel last week. It's nice.
The Epic v Apple lawsuit verdict makes this allowed now.
I am so close to having raspberry pi phones but even rasp pi 's are getting expensive because of AI dammit
My understanding is that the reason the number 30% is so magical is a historical anomaly. When software was physically distributed back in the day, 15% of the MSRP was reserved for the distributor and another 15% for the retailer. When these digital marketplaces were set up, the companies just said "well, we're the distributor and the retailer, so we'll keep both". Forgetting the fact that the cost to distribute and retail the software is literally pennies on the dollar of what it used to be.
I think the irony in this case is that this is a greed problem of their own making. When Steve Jobs announced that apps on the original iPhone would only be $1-$3, he set off the first enshittification crisis in the software industry. In 2008, Bejeweled cost $19.99 if you wanted to buy it on the PC. On the iPhone it was $0.99! This artificially low anchor price is what kicked off the adoption of ad and subscription driven software models in the first place.
Of course the retailer margin is never actually 50%. That's theoretical if 100% of product is sold at MSRP. Actual retail margins are about 25% because of sales, write-offs, et cetera.
OTOH when there's a sale in Steam, they still get their full cut (of the reduced price).
So that margin not only had to pay for small management costs, and had small opportunity costs on the floor space, but it also was divided by a large unitary price.
It made perfect sense that this shiny new iOS platform would take 30% of a cheap app to ensure that it matches the high quality of iOS. These were little productivity apps and games at the time.
This however - I just don't understand what the need is for an app at all for Patreon. Isn't this a website/platform kind of thing? Wouldn't an app just be an additional window into the Patreon platform?
What's next - 30% of my pizza price goes to Apple because I ordered it on my phone?
I'm pretty sure Apple has discussed things exactly like this.
Their upper management really does tend to think that 30% of any monetary transaction on an Apple platform belongs to them. Too bad our government is too busy being ran by the billionaires to do anything about these abuses from billionaires.
Too many parasites between creators and consumers
I think people find it easier to scowl at the villain du jour than to dig into the deep complex issue of when capitalism doesn’t work, when the government isn’t doing enough, and what we could do about it… or the feeling that we really can’t do much.
That's why people don't dig into the deep complex issues. Because it's uncomfortable, and forces one to confront the potential reality that their worldview, and everything they've known about how our society works is wrong, broken, and collapsing in front of them.
It can be a very distressing and depressing state of mind. There's a reason "ignorance is bliss" is a common trope, because there's some real truth to it. For some, it's better for emotional and mental wellbeing to ignore the problems of reality and remain ignorant.
They make literally about 40% of their profit off of Apple services. Do you really think if people on mass stopped buying Apple TV, Apple Pay, Apple Music, an iCloud, they wouldn’t care?
https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2026/01/2025-marked-a-record-...
I mean the minute people started talking a general worker strike in Minneapolis all of a sudden all these companies freaked our and wrote a letter protesting about IVE’s behavior in Minneapolis.
It's not an attitude, it's an observation. Corporations almost never change their behaviors because of protests and people bitching about them. It's one of the least effective ways of implementing change, especially when said company holds a locked in/monopoly position.
The thing is the end consumer is mostly hidden from the problems of Apples over charging, it deeply affects the companies selling services on the Apple platforms. What would affect Apple far more is not consumers not buying, but a huge part of the people offering on Apples market pulling out. But, Apple has that game rigged to. Particular suppliers get special deals with far lower costs. The competitors to those suppliers are now screwed. Apple will not offer them lower costs (again, Apple hides these contracts until they eventually get disclosed in court), every other company ends up paying a huge Apple tax because pulling out hand the competitor a huge market.
Honestly I'm fine with Apple charging whatever it wants for on its store. I am not fine with Apple selling you what should be a general purpose device and saying only its store can be used. Competitive stores on the device would quickly break Apple of it's monopoly behavior.
Having a boycott against you is like being hated. Firms spend enormous sums on advertisements.
Even a tiny group boycotting you has a substantial influence on your popularity-- they will tell their friends, etc. and will lead to reduced popularity.
General public: "OMG, I should boycott Apple because they are making some other businesses life hard, why?"
It's a very hard sale because all the general public sees is Apple phones are easy to use and friendly. Attempting to explain the complexities that occur in the background gives Apple power in the narrative that they are doing everything to keep you "safe".
Ah, the "vote with your dollar" argument. How's that been working out.
But from past threads in a Linux Forum, seems this only applies to people using the Apple IOS App for Patreon. Not sure if using Apple Laptops.
But if you use Patreon's WEB Site directly, the fee cannot be collected by Apple.
That was my take anyways.
Moreover, the fee only applies to the subscriptions made using Apple's payment system. That being said, in most jurisdictions their payment system is the only one developers can use in an app. IMHO, this is the real problem.
If they weren’t a public company, you’d think they were the mob. I’ll never trust the Apple ecosystem ever again
Patreon fought this for a while but Apple has all the leverage unfortunately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple
> While Apple implemented App Store policies to allow developers to link to alternative payment options, the policies still required the developer to provide a 27% revenue share back to Apple, and heavily restricted how they could be shown in apps. Epic filed complaints that these changes violated the ruling, and in April 2025 Rogers found for Epic that Apple had willfully violated her injunction, placing further restrictions on Apple including banning them from collecting revenue shares from non-Apple payment methods or imposing any restrictions on links to such alternative payment options. Though Apple is appealing this latest ruling, they approved the return of Fortnite with its third-party payment system to the App Store in May 2025.
Once again, Patreon is going to strong-arm all of us into "charge at the moment of sign-up" instead of "charge on the first of the month." They have wanted this for years, and once again they are saying that Apple has given them cover to demand it. Here's what I wrote when they tried to pull this shit a year and a half ago and then chickened out:
Patreon has two billing models, monthly (bills on the first of the month, or whenever they get around to it) and daily (charges you the moment you sign up.)
For several years now, they have been trying really hard to get creators to switch to daily billing whether they like it or not, with a series of intrusive nags and dark patterns. E.g., the "Settings" tab always has an "unread" alert on it reminding me that I have not made the "recommended" change.
Now they're going to force everyone to switch, and they're blaming Apple for it. And, to be clear, fuck Apple, but also fuck Patreon, this is their choice and it's going to mean that I can no longer use their service.
Here's a support request I just sent them, again, after clicking 15 levels deep into their FAQ before finding the thing that might contact a human. Since the email alerting me of this change came from a "noreply" address because of course it did.
Feel free to send your own:
---
Subject: Subscription billing is unacceptable
You recently sent mail saying that you're going to force me to switch from monthly billing to subscription billing.
Subscription billing is unacceptable for my Patreon. It does not work.
I sell monthly memberships to a physical nightclub. The memberships begin on the first of the month. I fulfill and mail the physical membership cards on the first of the month. If you make me switch to daily billing, that means I will have to do merch fulfillment on a daily basis instead, and I simply cannot do that.
If you force me to switch from a monthly cycle to a daily cycle I will have no choice but to stop using Patreon.
To be clear: I do not give a shit about the iOS app. Not one fractional fuck is given. If the solution to this problem is that people cannot sign up for, or access, my Patreon from the iOS app, that is 100% acceptable to me.
I know for a fact that none -- zero, 0% -- of my patrons have signed up using the iOS app. I know this because I had to warn them away from it, due to the 30% Apple Tax, and all of them complied. All of them. The iOS app is utterly meaningless to me and to my patrons.
(Also you are blaming this on Apple's bullying, which is simply not credible. You've been nagging me to change to subscription billing for years, with the little red error icon appearing everywhere. This is your decision. You are transparently using Apple as an excuse.)
---
I said this same thing to you a year and a half ago, the last time you tried to pull this nonsense. Second verse, same as the first. Last time, support replied that they "completely get why this change would be upsetting" and "will bring my feedback to the team." Uh huh.
Patreon's absolutely awful level of service and support has been a huge problem for quite some time, but I am really not looking forward to having to figure out how to implement recurring monthly billing on my own.
Patreon, YOU HAD ONE JOB.
[0] https://www.jwz.org/blog/2026/01/patreon-is-lying-again-and-...
Alternatively, they could show up at the nightclub in person and bring their phone with proof of purchase and the bouncer could hand them a membership card and cross their name off a list.
Apple (perhaps like all corporations but I'm focusing on Apple) is a greedy company that has massively lost it's way. Tim Cook support fascists and/or anything to improve the bottom line, especially if it increases "services" [0]. Alan Dye (thank god he is now busy screwing up Meta) shipped the worst UI revamp I've seen in a while from a company Apple's size and the iOS/iPadOS/visionOS/macOS software is all in dire straits. And they managed to do all of this while alienating developers left and right and playing chicken with governments around the world [0] instead of relaxing their hold on their platforms.
But who cares? The stock price went up. /s
I was overjoyed to see Alan Dye leave (and Jony Ive) and hope that we don't have to wait too much longer to bid Tim Cook adieu. Whoever takes over next has a lot of work ahead to dig out of the hole Tim Cook dug for Apple.
Tim Cook might be the best thing for shareholders but he has been horrible for product quality (software and hardware) and for democracy.
[0] Pay no attention to how much of services revenue came from the Google search deal with the majority of the rest coming from casinos for children and adults alike.
[1] Like the EU DMA, which, I have publicly and privately voiced my dislike of parts of it but Apple has no one to blame but themselves. By keeping a white-knuckle grip on their revenue they forced governments across the world to pass laws (often bad IMHO) that fragment and confuse the entire iOS market.
I suspect developers are looking for these workaround because of the 30%. If Apple had asked for, say, 10%, would there be as many developers looking for loopholes?
I don't know. Apple perhaps should ask for compensation for "vouching for" the developer's app, hosting the app, distributing the app. But Steam shows us another model where the developer themselves pay a modest up-front cost to have their app hosted ($100) and then Steam steps out of the way.
I wonder if this would go a long way too to thinning the herd so to speak from the Apple App Store—perhaps improve the overall quality of the apps submitted.
But now iOS is the most popular computing platform in the US. We no longer _have_ an option to ignore it.
And 30% is just crazy. And it's _on_ _top_ of all other expenses: Apple hardware that you need to buy to develop for iOS, $100 per year subscription fee, overhead of using Apple's shitty tools, etc.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-betrayed-trust-says-iph...
Ports hiding on the back so you have to endure the sound of USB-tin scraping against anodized aluminum, the round mouse, etc.
For example, you have to scroll beneath last-gen laptop GPUs before you can find any Apple hardware on the OpenCL charts: https://browser.geekbench.com/opencl-benchmarks
By software problem, though, I meant referencing OpenCL benchmarks. No one in 2026 should be using OpenCL on macOS at all, and the benchmarks aren’t representative of the hardware.
I think the most annoying thing is how unevenly the policy is applied. Some megacorps pay the 30% and others like Amazon get sweetheart deals. So it unfortunately comes down to who benefits more. If you have something Apple really wants then they will cut a deal. But if not then you pay the high tax. They've at least cut it down somewhat for smaller devs and teams, but the whole industry needs to change. IAP/Subscriptions shouldn't just inherit the pricing systems of old.
I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
I agree, there were deals down to 15% I think (maybe lower) but I don't think that's still happening? I mean, Netflix finally gave up but only after increasing their IAP fee to cover the difference for many years. I might be behind the times on this but I didn't think they still had better cuts for larger corporations. I do know not all developers are treated the same (see Meta still being on the app store after all the shenanigans they pulled with enterprise certs, or Uber), and that does suck. It means that if you are big enough you can break the rules while an indie dev can have everything taken due to an automated system or mistake, even when it's not their fault.
> I have a feeling Tim is just going to tank the Trump stuff and then peace out next admin so he gets all the blame. Much like Ive and Dye have been.
I agree that's likely, though the thought of him staying till the "end" of that is not attractive.
Apple and the contracted company are very very unlikely to tell you they have a secret contract for lower prices in effect unless they are forced to under court disclosure.
Your mindset results in Apple users thinking "the problem is those stupid Android idiots who accept being in an ad tech company's spyware garden" and Android users thinking "the problem is those stupid Apple idiots who accept that 30% of literally everything they do goes to Apple". In reality, we have a common enemy in the big tech duopoly and extremely lacklustre regulation which lets them keep doing this shit. You calling me an idiot for making a different shitty trade-off than you helps nobody.
Or allowing users to control their hardware and software and give them the freedom to install the hell they want on it?
We've been using computers for eternities where we still have the possibility, yet, as soon as it is about phones then "no way, we protecting you from bad actors".
Give me a break, you want to help protect me from bad actors implement proper software/hardware jails/containers for third party software and that's it.
I'm not switching to Sailfish.
I don't think you calling me an idiot will make that happen faster, is the point.