Less than two hours before Apple’s big Worldwide Developers Conference, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company would be launching a new interface for creators that shows how different fees affect their earnings on the platform. The announcement comes as Apple is under intense scrutiny for its App Store fees.
Here’s a preview of what the new interface will look like. This example breaks down exactly how taxes and fees are taken away from a creator’s event revenue:
Zuckerberg wasn’t clear as to when the new interface would be launching beyond saying that there’d be “more to come soon.”
Zuckerberg also says the company will keep paid online events, fan subscriptions, badges, and “our upcoming independent news products” free for creators until 2023. This is an extension of a policy announced in August. When Facebook introduced the events feature last year, it had promised that it wouldn’t collect fees until “at least” 2021.
The company eventually plans to introduce a revenue share, Zuckerberg says — but when it does, it will be “less than the 30% that Apple and others take.”
Facebook and Apple are also embroiled in a public spat over Apple’s App Tracking Transparency feature introduced with iOS 14.5. Facebook has come out strongly against the change, taking out full-page newspaper ads criticizing the changes ahead of their eventual release, and more recently, it asked users for permission to track them to help keep Facebook and Instagram “free of charge.”
