In one sense, I agree with it. Patreon is a rent-seeking middleman who abuses network effects. 100%.
But the creators on Patreon who's income are going to be most affected by this don't care about which side of the debate is more likeable to you, and I'm kind of sick of pretending that policies that affect a huge swath of people (often people with limited options, virtually no power, and few backup resources) can be treated like popularity contests.
The video essayists, programmers, artists, authors, and indies doing weird, wonderful work supported through Patreon get their revenue squeezed even tighter, being forced to either bleed revenue or subscribers due to new fees, being forced to abandon revenue models and subscription models that Apple doesn't like.. and, I mean, honestly, "I hate both companies" just is not a valid or acceptable response to that situation.
The solution to rent-seeking middlemen is not to make more of them.
Internet payments/subscription platforms are in desperate need of more competition, even partial competition.
I thought for a while that Youtube was experimenting with paid subscribers? But it's possible that I misunderstood or that Google just got bored and abandoned it.
Ultimately, Patreon isn't fundamentally doing something that even a non-tech user can't whip up for their own website. May need to resort to a payment processor (another middleman) to get donations going, but it's possible. I can take my ball home.
Current factors on IOS make it impossible to do the same on IOS, even post DMA they want to rent-seek outside of the App Store. I think that's what makes IOS worse in my eyes.
I think ethics is not applicable here. Corps are for profit enterprises, and seek every chance to bring gain to shareholders.
Regulators goal is to support competitive market and healthy business environment, they totally can go after monopolists who abuse network effect and/or put limit on rent amount (say 5-15% from transaction) to support value creators.
Sure, but the act of charging money for a service isn't inherently unethical. I just want to know where and what lines you draw.
>Regulators goal is to support competitive market and healthy business environment, they totally can go after monopolists who abuse network effect and/or put limit on rent amount (say 5-15% from transaction) to support value creators.
They could, but I'm not optimistic. I think many regulators are out of touch and don't realize how much upkeep digital commerce is saying. They see 30%, assossiate it to the days of brick and mortar which charged much more than that and say "well that's reasonable, Apple needs the money". All while ignoring the different landscape of how much people need to survive these days and how utterly hand over fist the middleman make.
There's just not a lot of empathy these days, and if all these Apple/Google lawsuits as is hasn't changed much, we need that empathy to make change.
they are both rent seeking middle-men who abuse network effect, its just one has more power than another.