this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2026
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Why does Apple feel they deserve a 30% cut? In cases like this, Apple aren't providing any value at all.
Sure, Apple are providing a payments platform, but why do they deserve 10x what Stripe charges?
Because they can. Time and time again, useful idiots have proven their dipshittery by sucking off the people taking them for a ride.
A main tenant of business decisions is to fuck over your customers as hard as they're willing to be fucked. Since nobody has any standards these days, corporations make a killing.
Lack of competition. No other app store is allowed to operate on Apple devices. They have a monopoly, which is the only reason they can charge as much as they do
I don't believe that 30% cut includes payment processing. That's an additional fee
Sad to think about how little creators actually get at the end of the day. Example of a $100 donation/subscription:
Apple takes 30%
Card companies take ~4%
Patreon takes 10%
Taxes take another big chunk
After all that a the creator would have, what, $40?
That's only true outside of Europe. In the EU, they were forced to allow third-party app stores. The US government doesn't have the guts to do that, since they focus more on the needs/wants of companies, whereas the EU is really focused on consumer rights.
Does Patreon's cut not include payment processing?
The other thing that's ridiculous in the USA is how much credit card processing costs. Stripe is around 3%, while in countries it can be half of that (in Australia, it's commonly around 1% for debit cards and 1.5% for credit cards).
It's just platform-milking, just like Meetup.com's latest antics; there isn't deep analysis needed to everything, haha. "Capitalism" is totally a legitimate answer despite being just one word.
Meetup is now owned by Bending Spoons, who have also enshittified wetransfer, Evernote, eventbrite, AOL, vimeo. They buy decent products that never exploded to ipo status, fire everyone and milk the rest for whatever they can charge.
Ironic that they named themselves on a plot about breaking out of a cycle of control, classic Palantir or Anduril vibes too of like “haha movies good where stonks”
Why does one company need to own meetup and eventbrite?
Is that not a monopoly? How does it not violate any anti-trust laws?
Edit to add: how long before we see a fediverse events app?
There is one, Mobilizon
Thank you!
You got a link to what meetup has been up to?
Just join a group, and you'll see. It's so goddamn scummy and nickel/diming.
I, too, am interested in hearing about these supposed shenanigans.
I dunno, I left a couple years ago after they stopped providing .ics, started spamming our members that we were paying for, and then refused to provide us with the emails of our members.
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.
It's one way but not the only way. They make money from developers before they even write a single line of code, every year.
Apple is doing nothing in this particular case, not in general. There's cases where the 30% is more justified.
Oh is there some case where Apple is creating the content inside the app??? Do tell.
They were sued by Epic Games for the same shit and Epic won on one count which allows them to put links to alternative payment methods and go around Apple.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_Games_v._Apple
So couldn't patreon just argue in court that this precedent was already set with epic?
That is how case law works, yes.
I'm just wondering then why Apple would even push this if a president was already set with Epic. What a bunch of greedy corporate bastards.
Expecting Patreon to not want to bother fighting them over it, and they are correct in that assumption.
Edit, adding my source: https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/patreon-creators-have-to-switch-to-subscription-billing-by-november-thanks-to-apple-203759852.html
I'm not a lawyer but I think they could.
They provide the payment system. They also mandate it.
If you subscribe on the website you don't have to pay the extra. It's only for subscriptions initiated via the app
An app you can only get via the Apple store, mandated by Apple?
You can make the subscription through the website on the phone just as well and not pay the cut to apple.
Most likely the app exists just because people don't know how to type patreon.com into the browser anymore
Full functionality is available on the web AFAIK. And if you subscribe on the web, there's no Apple cut, but you can still use the app to see said content.
It's an inconvenience, but a super easy one to get past and not exclusive to Patreon so a trick any Apple users should know anyway if they enjoy paying subscriptions for things (Netflix, Spotify, whatever)
I too assume the Patreon App doesn't do anything that cannot be done on their web page. I can imagine there are good dev reasons but also bad incentives to make it an app.
I am biased against Apple as I like being the one in control of my hardware/software.. but is it a stretch to say Apple influence their users to use apps instead of web pages (so they can rent-seek a cut)?
Your opinion of Apple is generally valid, but as an Apple user for the last few years, I've never actually seen Apple push me to install an app. It's always the website itself saying "it's even better in the app!" or something.
Yeah. But why would you use the app? I personally didn’t know there even was an app.
Maybe it offers something better than on whatever web browser Apple mandates, or maybe no reason but user preference.
PWAs aren't great on iPhone... They intentionally limit some functionality to push people towards the App Store.
Some people want everything as apps for some reason.
There’s no way that the Patreon app isn’t more than a dolled up web view. If people make stupid decisions I guess the fallout is on them.
Sadly the fallout is usually on everyone - eventually companies will copy a shady practice as it's been shown they can get away with it until no other option exists. It falls on the technologically literate to call out when others are being mistreated or they can suffer too.
No, the fallout is on creators.
Deserving is irrelevant under Capitalism. It's only whether they can get away with it or not?
And fixing this problem is going to require a similar attitude from the people tired of this.
We need to rep our interests as ruthlessly and as sophisticatedly as our enemies.
We have a winner
Because apple is a "premium" product, so you have to pay a "premium" fee for normal stuff so it feels like you're using "premium" services
But you're getting literally the same Patreon content.
But you're paying more, so it's "premium" content, clearly.
gotta get the money to bribe trump somehow
Just pass on the cost of the corruption to the consumer, as usual. It's the Corruption Tax.
Where else would it come from? 🤷♂️
This sums the problem up fairly nicely I think. I do wonder with Apple being a gatekeeper by EUs own definition and unfair sales terms supposed to be history with the Digital Markets Act in place this can't go through, right?!?! at least not in the EU... assuming they do their job.
Apple also gets money from developers who use their platform already. That should be it.
Apple will already bully small developers off their platform while giving bigger companies first-class treatment.
It's not about what they deserve, it's about what they want.
Because greed.
I suspect this has more to do with closing a loophole than going after Patreon and only Patreon.
People don’t have to subscribe through the app. and Patreon don’t have to offer that functionality in the App. Apple don’t have Patreon locked in to their platform.