Yen also pointed out how such a court decision could help cut inflation in the US, too, “by dropping the price of a significant chunk of digital purchases by 30% overnight”.
I bet most companies will just take that extra 30% as profit rather than giving it back to their users like proton has.
Yeah, even of the companies don’t pocket the difference, he’s an idiot to suggest that this will cut inflation.
This guy is just not very smart, I think.
I think he’s a salesperson trying to sell the idea that getting rid of the apple tax is good for consumers.
getting rid of the apple tax is good for consumers.
I mean that’s not wrong. I had no idea Apple was double-dipping like this. I wonder if Google is doing the same thing…
Every store does this. Even Holy Valve
Every company who takes a cut from in-app purchases, be it subscriptions or DLC, should be kneecapped by this ruling.
It’s one thing for the hosting marketplace (App Store, Steam, Play Store, etc) to take a cut from the initial purchase of a game/app. But it’s a whole other issue for that initial marketplace to keep reaching further into the dev’s pockets and take a cut from in-app purchases unrelated to where it was originally obtained.
I’m not entirely optimistic about this ruling, but we’ll see.
Apple had no reason NOT to give refunds and then use their weight to claw it back from the app developer.
But what happens when not-too-legit apps use non-AppStore external sites to unlock features in an app?
In a perfect world it’s cheap and easy and reliable.
But it can also be a scammy shop that lures you into expensive subscriptions with no easy way to cancel them (eg. gym membership) and what happens when Little Timmy spends $9000 for Nlartbux in a mobile game’s external store?
Could go either way 🤷🏻♂️
I’m not entirely optimistic about this ruling, but we’ll see.
Apple had no reason NOT to give refunds and then use their weight to claw it back from the app developer.
Greed.
But what happens when not-too-legit apps use non-AppStore external sites to unlock features in an app?
I suppose we will see what happens. That’s a very slippery slope though, full of FUD, and is the same logic that Apple, Microsoft, and others try to use to keep users locked into their walled gardens.
In a perfect world it’s cheap and easy and reliable.
But it can also be a scammy shop that lures you into expensive subscriptions with no easy way to cancel them (eg. gym membership) and what happens when Little Timmy spends $9000 for Nlartbux in a mobile game’s external store?
Could be. Multiple alternative markets exist for Android already though, and some shops are scammy as fuck. Google has already put protections in place to prevent sideloading potentially harmful apps (including alternative markets), but the savvy user who knows how to bypass those restrictions should* know how to spot scammy shit.
Could go either way 🤷🏻♂️
“For your security” was never about security.
what happens when Little Timmy spends $9000 for Nlartbux in a mobile game’s external store?
That’s why you don’t put your credit card info in a phone or tablet and let kids play with it.
What? Since when does Valve prohibit companies from redirecting customers to non-Valve purchasing flows? Because that’s what this ruling is about, it says Apple can’t prohibit apps from telling users to go buy off-platform for lower prices. Valve isn’t doing that with Steam afaik, actually I’m not aware of any other platform that does this
Valve will even allow developers to create their own Steam keys free of charge and sell them wherever they want with no commission whatsoever
That’s pretty open I’d say
Lol, as long as you properly plan in advance and coordinate such a thing, not the way that uh… Dead Matter tried to do it.
Dear god what a fustercluck.
Any of the video game console companies.
They literally do not lol
In game purchases in steam games don’t have to pay Valve, nor does Valve prevent you from uploading your game to other stores, which is what this ruling was about.
Here comes the Steam defenders.
I have many issues with the gamer deference to the steam monopoly… But they don’t partake in this particular abuse: taking a cut from the dev for all in game purchases. They only take a (sizeable) cut for the initial game purchase.
What do you mean “double dipping”? I don’t own any Apple products. I purchased through Proton’s website.
If someone purchases a Proton plan through their iOS app, Apple got a 30% cut of that. Which is stupid. Because Proton (and every other company with an iOS app) already pays Apple to simply have their app on Apple’s app store.
Proton…already pays Apple to simply have their app on Apple’s app store.
Uhhh I mean they pay a $100/year developer fee, which probably doesn’t even cover the infrastructure costs. Is that what you’re referring to?
I’m not arguing against you, Apple should consider those costs as a service to their (overpaying) customers. I’m just not sure what other costs you’re referring to.
Is that what you’re referring to?
Yes (I thought it was more, but w/e). I’ll admit, I don’t know a whole lot about development and everything that it entails, but nuance is key here. Say what you will about Proton, but this ruling just set a precedent that a company hosting an app/game download cannot take a cut from purchases completed within said app/game. That affects everyone.
I’m just looking at this from a bigger picture perspective. Apple has more than enough money already, and frankly there are far too many companies like this who need to be cut back down.
Or he’s just shitting on other companies who he knows are too greedy to do the same. Proton is getting positive press for this and he’s leaning into it with a bit of hyperbole
Not saying he’s a genius or anything, he’s just a spokesperson doing spokesperson things
How many years until prices go up? I bet they marked down 1-2 years where they realize they can’t up the prices. But after, it will creep up.
In a decade it’ll probably be the same price it was last year.
Interesting that Andy Yen does not have a Wiki page. But Proton says “Previously, Andy was a research scientist at CERN and has a PhD in particle physics from Harvard University.” so, I think he’s very smart, he’s just outside of his lane here.
So, I initially wanted to just kneejerk respond yes, it is absurd to suggest this ruling against Apple… would have any kind of generally noticable effect on inflation.
But I wanted to check the actual numbers.
Ok, so, total US consumer spending in 2024 is about $64 Trillion.
… The Apple App Store generated $105 Billion in revenue in 2024.
Ok, napkin math: 30% off of lets just say literally all App Store payments… , ok, we’ve cut costs by about $32 Billion… shave that off the $64 Trillion…
And voila!
A rough general price reduction of… 0.05%
Call a median US yearly income $60K, and they’ve saved $30 bucks. Maybe the cost of either one or two DoorDash meals, depending on where you live… probably much closer to just one.
We’re saved from inflation rofl!
Yeah, Proton is bucking the obvious trend, with this one. Most companies will totally take the profits rather than lowering prices.
Companies that were app-first like mobile games probably won’t cut prices much if any. Companies that were web-first like Proton and Patreon probably will.
could help cut inflation in the US
I highly doubt Apple App Store revenues are a significant portion of the CPI.
I mean, let’s not kid ourselves that it has no effect, but it’s not even in the basket
Yep, product prices are not based on costs but rather just the absolute maximum of what consumers are willing to pay.
Proton just seems to be an exception.
In a sufficiently competitive market, the maximum is related to costs.
Proton is trying to get cheap marketing.
It’s not. It’s just related to the competition AKA what people are willing to pay.
With enough competition, someone is going to compete on price to attract customers. They obviously can’t sell for less than their costs (again, sufficiently competitive so you don’t get monopolies starving their competition), so that’s the floor for what they can sustainably charge.
It doesn’t matter what the service is, if there are enough viable alternatives, at least one of them will go for the value play. Customers aren’t willing to pay more than they have to, so they’ll be attracted to lower cost options.
What I’m saying is that competition is included in “what people are willing to pay”. Cost of production is not.
Sure. But if people aren’t willing to pay more than the cost of production, games wouldn’t be made. The cost of production is the floor, and the cost people are willing to pay is the ceiling, and competition finds a line somewhere in the middle. The more competition, the closer it is to the cost of production.
if people aren’t willing to pay more than the cost of production, games wouldn’t be made.
Then that unmade game wouldn’t be relevant to this discussion.
The cost of production is the floor, and the cost people are willing to pay is the ceiling, and competition finds a line somewhere in the middle
Again, no it doesn’t. “What people are willing to pay” includes the competition. If one company undercuts another with a comparable product, consumers won’t pay for the more expensive one.
Do he still think fascism is good for small businesses though?
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Why is it bad though? This business is in no form related to politics. It wouldn’t change fundamentally even if Hitler ran it.
You are not cooking blud
I’m not going to willingly put my money towards someone who supports that kind of thing. The first response to my comment was a very level headed response and provided evidence that he does not directly support the administration.
Still doesn’t provide me a lot of consumer confidence though.
Maybe you should reconsider your threat model. You seem to be very light on information. If political views is an issue than you’re the issue.
Political views are 100% the issue, they drive all other business decisions. If you’re fucked enough to support what’s going on in the US government, I can’t trust you to be a normal human, let alone run a business.
Fuck off with your apologisim for nazis
I bet every company has at least one employee with right-wing political views. Choosing a product based on some random quotes by employees is stupid.
MASSIVE fucking difference between Bob in the warehouse being a racist fuck, and the god damn CEO.
Hold on, racism? We are talking about racism? Did I miss something?
If only he ever said that you weren’t making up bullshit by misrepresenting his statement.
And article on the topic of what Andy Yen said: https://techissuestoday.com/proton-ceo-responds-to-backlash-after-his-post-supporting-trump-selection/
It’s always this exact article “on the topic” that gets posted in response. I remember his posts on social networks though.
So, while his comment wasn’t entirely neutral I don’t see any endorsement of fascism in there.
I’d say you either openly oppose fascism or you condone it, there are no other possibilities
That’s fair I guess.
It sounds like that is the same as saying “you can’t oppose corporate monopolies without openly opposing fascism”
There is a lot of risk in that sort of intentional abdication of nuance, hopefully self-evident to you and to all who read this.
The difference is that he could have just not said anything, yet he chose to praise Republicans and denounce Democrats. Sure, there’s plenty of reasons to denounce Democrats, but putting that alongside praising Republicans is beyond tone-deaf.
This.
It was the same with Elon before he went head first into facism. They usually start by selling themselves as liberal with some occasional praise of conservatives. Then later claim they are moderate or the go to favorite of tech bros claiming they are libertarian, since saying they are conservative might receive backlash.
So not really. Thanks for the actual answer.
Edit: goddamn, you actually changed my view somewhat and people still go piling on lol
Are you kidding? Hating on Andy Yen for saying dumb shit he didn’t actually literally say is basically a Lemmy staple meme by now.
I’m not a Nazi, I just admire their personnel picks. And their economic policy. And their uniforms. And the killing of some jews. But I’m not a Nazi!
I’m so tired
Damn. People here sure love purity testing. The guy could pay for their cancer treatment and still slap him every chance because they got it wrong publicly in the past but once you get it wrong publicly once, you’re out of the club. Go be a conservative we don’t want you. When someone at Tuta has a bad year and ends up in the wrong publicly, find another email service to try and convince people to go too. Probably worse in functionality than Tuta as you go down to smaller and worse funded efforts in this niche field of Internet activism
But people here do it here too to Mozilla because they don’t like their social outreach programs and their attempts to get advertising revenue so screw Mozilla too. So because nothing but perfection is acceptable, push away people that may be adjacent/left leaning right and switch to less developed products. Switch from Firefox and attack Mozilla who do the bulk of Firefox development and use Waterfox who do a custom deployment/build. Pure display of perfection being the enemy of good here.
You want people to embrace privacy but keep whiplashing people around when the org/anyone in leadership says something wrong. Screw Signal, they’re not perfect. Screw Matrix/Element, some developer said something one day so it’s all bad. I’m surprised anyone here uses any privacy software or a major open source software like Linux or Krita or Blender at the risk that someone in the background may be wrong in someway which I am 100% certain they exist in important positions. Same with Lemmy
Go back to the 60s and you all would be shitting on Fred Hampton for accepting the impure and the color coalition for everyone that had ever said something wrong. Al Franken definitely would not make it with y’all. Y’all can’t build up leftist communities because y’all are bitter assholes that can’t move on and spend so much time purity testing. Y’all are probably mediocre too so can’t make a difference in privacy and data ownership activism anyways so should be lining up to support not just Tuta, someone hasn’t screwed up publicly yet, and Proton
Reminds me of Aung San Suu Kyi. She was under the gun of the military ruling class that permitted limited democratic government and because she didn’t make speech as if she lived in the US, a bunch of Americans turned on her and celebrated when the military dictatorship came back to rule and put her in prison the moment it seemed like the civilian government would actually assert more power
It’s not a purity test so much as a fear that publicly signaling loyalty to trump devalued their trustworthiness as private and secure. If their CEO legitimately believes that Republicans are better on tech policy than democrats because conservatives want to weaponize the federal government to control speech online, then I don’t really trust him not to cooperate with federal authorities when they want to access someone’s emails or vpn traffic. Conservatives are simply not trustworthy to me
Louder for the idiots who can’t seem to listen. Preach!
If they can charge 30% less without Apple’s fees, then why are their prices the same whether you buy on their iOS app or direct on their website? Why have they been overcharging users who don’t buy through the iOS app by 30% all this time?
Old knowledge disclaimer, but if they didn’t change it then:
Because Apple literally tells people that they’re not allowed to charge less somewhere else - at least that was the case several years ago…
This is the same on most platforms. You’ll rarely find a product for different prices in different places because if they’re listed on Amazon, Steam, Apple, Google, etc. they’re not allowed to.
Because Apple prohibited that.
“Up to”…… here’s 5% off
Cool! Still not gonna put all my eggs in the fascist-sympathetic basket
I am sad because of all the people in this thread who think the CEO is “fascist-sympathetic” because he said Trump did something better than the Democrats one time.
Yeah, having only just switched from GMail to Proton last week my heart sank when I saw “Proton are MAGA”.
Then I spent three minutes reading up on it and it’s like, the CEO said one thing about policy on regulation of big tech that was critical of the Democrats for not doing enough, and the internet has decided that means he’s MAGA.
He said Republicans are better on tech policy than democrats. Republicans tech policy is motivated entirely by the fact that their racist and conspiratorial views were getting them banned on social media sites from 2015 - 2024
Conservatives have absolutely zero principles. If they say they want to break up big tech, it’s because they want to control it in some way. They want the platforms to promote speech that’s beneficial to them.
If you believe that Republicans truly are better for tech policy than democrats, then you either whole-heartedly agree that a group of criminals and wannabe dictators should be able to destroy any business that publishes speech against them, or you are extremely gullible. Either way, why would I want to give you my business?
Republicans tech policy is motivated entirely by the fact that their racist and conspiratorial views were getting them banned on social media sites from 2015 - 2024
And i should care because…? Why should I care why republicans wanted to break up tech monopolies, if breaking monopolies is anyway something that I consider a positive change?
Breaking monopolies give people more choice. More choice (free) leads to hopefully people choosing more privacy conscious tools. More privacy means less data that can be handed over to doge, less data that ICE has to target minorities, etc.
then you either whole-heartedly agree that a group of criminals and wannabe dictators should be able to destroy any business that publishes speech against them, or you are extremely gullible.
Those are not the only 2 options. I am instead very happy that they will do the right thing for the wrong reason, and outside those monopolies more people will choose services that republicans have no power over. Moreover, your whole argument assumes someone is in US. I am sympathetic to the people in US, but tech monopolies are a global problem.
Why should I care why republicans wanted to break up tech monopolies, if breaking monopolies is anyway something that I consider a positive change?
Because they’re not interested in breaking up monopolies; they’re interested in threatening their political enemies with breakup so they can control speech on those platforms. Mark Zuckerberg is kowtowing to Trump now to avoid being broken up.
You think the Republicans are going to break up tech and create a more diverse online publishing ecosystem that’s harder for any one party to control? No, they’ll crush their enemies and bolster their allies, so we’ll end up with even fewer choices
There are less than 10 companies that control almost the entire tech space. What “fewer choices”…?
Breaking up google would be already enough, which is what the focus was. All your comment sounds very fuzzy to me. Basically the whole antitrust thing is on google, if republicans break it up, great. Which " allies" are they going to bolster?
Absolutely agreed. I think when you have such role in a company you should avoid making political statements at all, because no matter what you say you will end up upsetting some people. In this case, “try-hard” democrats.
Well, it’s worth leveraging your status to communicate to the politicians (i.e. this tweet). In this case, it cost him more than I think he was expecting.
lol that is done with money, not social media posts. A CEO should know that.
why would he want to donate to trump? Public praise is worth more in many instances.
I’m of the opinion he should’ve shut the fuck up or said better words, so I don’t have any interest in trying to answer that for you.
Yeah he should’ve said what he said more tactfully. But sometimes one’s most controversial comments are ones that one wouldn’t have thought would get a lot of attention at all.
Not Even trump, just «the republicans»
It was definitely Trump.
I’m convinced that Trump is just a puppet.
Edit: downvoted by his strings.
No puppet!
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no no, you see Trump is totally anti-big tech. once he bleeds them dry from all the bribes they’ll be gone! /s
No doubt Proton’s CEO will use this to justify his “Trump is better for regulating big tech” claim, while ignoring that the judge is an Obama appointee.
Inb4 Trump invents tariffs on foreign coded software
You mean tariffs on services and the EU been floating the idea of putting tariff on US big tech
It’s not exactly 30%. For sales below $1M, it’s 15%: https://developer.apple.com/app-store/small-business-program/
In Europe, where this was established last year, they started charging a Core Technology Fee to cover the cost of hosting and data transfer: https://developer.apple.com/support/core-technology-fee/
And if you switch payment providers, you have to pay at least 2.5% plus transaction and any intermediary fees.
It’s nice that Proton is offering a discount, but for everyone else there may be additional ongoing costs.
15% if you know about it, if you apply, if you get accepted
Good watch on this stuff, the recent court decision overall
Dude’s so vindicated. Apple lover who HATES their treatment of developers cases like this.
It’s time to end monopolies
Should have done a valve and allowed selling anywhere but require price parity. Now from their greed there will be financial incentive for people to use another platform.
I thought Valve was the one who created Proton in the first place to let people play games on Linux
Different Proton my dude.
The Proton in the post offers mail, storage, and VPN services.
They did, but you only need that to play windows games. You can also use wine or play native Linux games.
This the trump-licker? Yeah, bye Proton.
Buh bye now
Thundermail is coming soon. By Mozilla.
I got a Proton two-year subscription that averages out to two dollars and change per month.
I already feel like I got an incredible deal.
Too bad the owner of Proton supports Trump, so when my two years subscription ends, I’m moving to Tuta or Posteo
I moves to proton because I was paying for a vpn, storage, and password manager and it all came out to like ~$45/mo. Proton gives me all that for $30/mo. This was the 3rd password manager I had my family migrate to so I think I’m gonna stick with them for a bit unless I see some kind of evidence that proton is violating the security of its users for governments. I don’t want to have my family have to move to yet ANOTHER password manager
I’m looking at mailbox.org when mine ends.
