• 4 Posts
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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • You mistake me completely. I’m not advertising the virtues of this system at all. I’m just pointing out that there is nothing Korean or American about declining birth rates. This is a universal phenomenon of a society’s transition from agrarianism where more hands = more wealth to an educated, skilled labor force where each child requires a significant investment.

    The US and, for example, Germany use immigration to offset this and keep their population growing. That’s simply a fact you can look up. Japan for example doesn’t want to do this and they’re dealing with the consequences of population decline. This is all over the news for years now.

    I’m not saying this is good or bad or anything. This is just the way things are.

    Your bit about Ancient Rome is a good laugh because it was hardly a developed society by today’s standards and it did indeed run on imported labor, except they called them slaves. So you are at once off base and also wrong.





  • Regulations were put in place to prevent manufacturers from opening their own stores right next to the dealers they worked with. Dealers assume some risk when they take on inventory. Apparently it’s not like a bookstore where any unsold copies just go back to the publisher. It’s still a flimsy justification though and enshrined these middlemen who then enshittified everything. Worse, in some cases manufacturers are entirely prevented from selling direct, even if they don’t work with dealerships. It’s too much.






  • Being in the AppStore gives you access to a lot of people. I don’t feel it’s at all relevant whether you happen to also have other exposure elsewhere. Apple charges you for the exposure you get from them, period. If you don’t want to pay for it, because you’re so successful on other channels, just don’t. Don’t have an iOS app. But for years we’ve had people who want an iOS app but also want to complain about sharing what they make from it. They still make too much to be willing to pull their app, but they complain anyway: because who doesn’t want higher margins.



  • I think of it like housework. No one should be compelled by the law to do housework. But if one person in the house is doing no housework, the others have a real and justified complaint. It’s not legal grounds for eviction, but it should be a material point against them in any dispute mediation that takes place.

    To translate that: if one party in a marriage is withholding sex, they don’t get to claim a full 50% right to all the assets in the marriage. I’m not saying zero, but…



  • We can safely assume that alternative app stores would have less effect on iOS than they have on Android, where Google desperately wants others to step in and develop their ecosystem. And they aren’t very significant on Android at all. I tried distributing my app on Samsung Galaxy in addition to GPlay and despite its preferential positioning with the world’s largest phone maker, I got peanuts for installs. Not even a rounding error. I literally took the app down. Oh and then Xiaomi got banned from the SDK and they stole my APK for their third party app store and began sending me bug reports about how it was “broken” there. Ah yes the power and glory of alternative app stores… Apple are wise not to dump this cesspit into their ecosystem, which people love because all they want is one decent, unified default that works well.


  • It’s logical but it probably scares away some customers. That’s why the “just eat it” option exists. iOS gives you access to an enormous market and payments are slick and easy. Creators may want $5 but if they can get 30% less from 500% more people, it’s still a good business for them. There’s no strict reason why they must obsess over taking 100% of the sticker price. There are a million examples of businesses who are willing to accept a discount for high volume business.


  • It reminds me of gas stations that only accept ATM cards and not credit cards, because they don’t want to lose the 3% that credit card companies take per transaction. They’re trying not to lose that 3%, but it will inconvenience some customers and lose them some business. That could easily be worse than 3%.

    So yes Patreon could say “go find a laptop and enter your credit card number in our web page” but there are people who won’t do all that because they expect to be able to pay with one tap. And businesses are on the AppStore because that great payment experience makes it super easy for them to convert customers.

    It’s just not as straightforward as saying “fuck you Apple, I’ll take my business elsewhere.”


  • This is THE way that Apple gets any revenue from the enormous and highly successful app platform and ecosystem they created. They say “go nuts, make money on our platform, but share some with us in exchange for our maintaining that platform.” This is reasonable. Apple is providing a service to Patreon, and access to their tremendous user base. That ain’t nothing.

    I agree that subjecting creator donations to the 30% is about the shittiest use case for this and I wish they would make an exception. But your post about how Apple is doing absolutely nothing here is garbage.


  • I really think this move blows and I wish they would reverse this decision and make an exception.

    However Tim Cook didn’t wake up one day and wonder how he could fuck creators. Apple takes a 30% cut of all app transactions. This is how they benefit from the enormous and highly successful app platform and ecosystem they created. It’s not pure evil to say “hey use this platform all you want but you must share some of what you make there with us.”

    It does suck that they won’t let creators off the hook though. This is like taxing rips.