The American social media giant Facebook is launching a new interface that will give creators a breakdown of how different fees affect their earnings in aim to make the content developers in the platform know how much money Apple and Google are taking from them.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made the announcement of the new feature just hours before Apple kicked off its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2021 and the move comes at a time when the US-based technology giant is facing “intense scrutiny” for its App Store fees.
The social media giant has given a preview of what its new interface is going to look like, which will break down exactly how much taxes and fees are “taken away” from a creator’s event revenue.
However, Mr. Zuckerberg was not clear about when the new interface would be launching beyond saying that there’d be “more to come soon.” The Facebook CEO also said that the company would keep paid online events, fan subscriptions, badges, and their “upcoming independent news products” free for all creators till 2023.
These are an extension of a policy Facebook announced in August last year while introducing the events feature on the platform. The company had also promised that they would not collect fees at least till 2021.
Facebook eventually plans to introduce a revenue share, as Mr. Zuckerberg has said. But when it does, it will be “less than the 30 percent that Apple and others take.”
Apple and Facebook have been involved in a rather public spat over Apple’s new App Tracking Transparency feature that was brought in with iOS 14.5. Facebook has been very critical about this update and has even taken out full-page newspaper ads lashing out at the changes ahead of their release.
More recently, Facebook asked users for “permission to track them” to keep Facebook and Instagram “free of charge”. Given that only about 4 percent of US users on iOS chose to opt-in for ad tracking.
Related: Facebook launches new tools to facilitate business-customer interactions
