
Facebook trying to position itself as friendlier to small businesses than Apple - rurp
https://www.axios.com/facebook-apple-app-store-22774656-4221-40e7-b6b6-307a1a2de4d5.html
======
gyc
Wonder 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
I'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).

~~~
wobbly_bush
> 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.

~~~
gkoberger
"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."

------
cma
Facebook'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
On 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
Not for the standalone headsets

~~~
idlewan
I 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
Sidequest 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).

------
camhart
Can anyone find anything official on this? Is it actually a lawsuit? Or what
does "Go After" mean?

~~~
fatnoah
[https://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
Has 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
How would you add a balance on facebook without a card?

~~~
giancarlostoro
I 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
Back 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.

------
ex3ndr
I bet that huge corporations will get their discount in the end, but all
smaller players not locking users even further.

------
ogre_codes
Facebook 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.

------
TekMol
If 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
Would 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
> 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.

------
coliveira
FB and other companies are trying to get their slice of the 30% fee that Apple
has enjoyed in the last few years.

------
adamnemecek
> which Facebook suggests hurts small businesses struggling to get by during
> the pandemic.

I'm sure that's why.

------
ForHackernews
Here'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
Here's hoping that Facebook pulls Instagram, too.

~~~
otterpop
Now THAT would hurt, but I feel like it would lead to a similar lawsuit to the
Epic Games Vs. Apple.

------
pwinnski
I 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
in 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.

~~~
natchy
well 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
If it does become the cash cow, is 30% the norm? Or would it settle on
something closer to 10% or 5%

~~~
actuator
It 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.

------
dotrat1989
Apple 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
There 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.

