Facebook: Apple’s Fees Hurt Businesses During the Pandemic

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On Friday Facebook rolled out a paid events feature to let businesses charge users to access live video streams, and Apple continues to enforce its App Store rules (via Bloomberg).

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Facebook executive Fidji Simo said that the company wanted Apple to waive its fees:

We went through our usual channels to suggest strongly to them to waive their fee or to let us use Facebook Pay — one of the two — and they declined. […] Helping small businesses recover from Covid is a critical thing that all tech companies should help with. The reason we’re calling them out here is we hope they join us and end up waving their fees, so that’s really the goal here.

App Store guidelines say that companies on the platform have to use Apple’s payment system and pay the company a 30% fee for using its platform. Google has the same policy for its Play Store and didn’t waive its fee for Facebook, either. But on Android Facebook could use its own payment service, Facebook Pay.

This news comes after Epic Games circumvented Apple’s payment system in its game Fornite. Apple removed the game because of this and Epic Games sued Apple and Google.

Other companies like Airbnb and ClassPass also offered online content, but removed them due to the 30% fee.

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