At a time when the "Apple tax" is under siege by multinational regulators, Facebook has also added a fire. On November 3, Facebook announced that it would provide creators with custom links to help them bypass 30% of Apple's draw.
Last week Facebook announced that it had changed its name to Meta, with the aim of shifting its focus to creating a "metacosm," a virtual space where users interact with each other.
On Wednesday (November 3), meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company will make several new changes to its subscription features to better support creators.
Facebook launched a subscription service in June 2020 that allows creators to charge subscribers a monthly subscription fee to provide "sustainable revenue." Under the latest plan, Facebook will launch a customized subscription link for creators on the platform, directing subscribers to another website to pay using Facebook Pay.
Facebook promises not to charge any subscription commissions until at least 2023, and creators will receive all the revenue earned in the transaction. In addition, Facebook will also launch some new creator tools, such as "Estimated Revenue Breakdown", showing creators their revenue sources, estimated taxes and fees paid to other companies such as Apple and Google.
To help creators grow their subscription business, creators will receive a $5 to $20 bonus for every new subscriber they get between now and the end of 2021. The new initiative is part of Facebook's pledged $1 billion creator incentive program.
"When we built metavalse, we focused on creating opportunities for creators to make money from their work," Mark Zuckerberg wrote, "and Apple's 30 percent fee for transactions makes it more difficult to do so, so we're updating our subscription offerings so that creators can now earn more." ”
Since the beginning of this year, Apple's consistently tough intra-system payment policy has faced multi-party regulatory shocks from Japan, South Korea, Italy, Russia and the United States.
In Epic Games v. Apple Monopoly, the California District Court ruled that Apple can no longer force developers to use the App Store payment system, must allow developers to provide users with out-of-app payment information, and requires Apple to complete rectification by December 9.
On October 21, Apple announced that developers could send out-of-app messages to user groups about out-of-app purchases. During the appeal, Apple asked for a stay of the court judgment, but the judge has not yet issued an updated ruling on the suspension.
From this point of view, Facebook's move is still in a gray area, but Facebook believes that the IOS system allows this practice, and Facebook will not cancel the function of users using apple payment system to subscribe to creators.
Meanwhile, the privacy battle between Facebook and Apple continues.
In June of this year, Apple updated the iOS operating system, explicitly asking users whether they would like to be tracked by the application to trace traces of network access. Apple's move is aimed at strengthening user privacy protections, but it has had an impact on Facebook's multi-billion dollar targeted advertising business.
Facebook then slammed Apple for abusing its dominance to collect data for self-benefit while not letting competitors use the same data. Apple countered that Facebook collected as much data as possible and ignored user privacy.
Synthesis/Compilation: Nandu reporter Huang Liling