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Elon Musk Wants Apple to Lower Fees for 'X' Creators
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This is another example of Musk being insane, it’s the ugliest vehicle ever by far, looks like a 3 year old designed it. Prepare for lots of laughs.
I will never side with Elon Musk.
Linda Yaccarino has been CEO of Twitter/X since June 5 2023.
Twitter or "X" CEO Elon Musk today said that he plans to speak with Apple CEO Tim Cook about lower App Store fees for creators who earn money through subscriptions on the Twitter/X social network.
In a post on creator support, Musk said that he plans to ask Apple to collect 30 percent of the creator fee that Twitter keeps rather than 30 percent of the total fee that a creator on Twitter earns. That would potentially give Apple a much lower cut of the money that Twitter is paying out to creators.
Musk said that Twitter does not plan to collect any fees from creators who earn under $100,000. After the $100k mark, Twitter will collect 10 percent of a creator's earnings, though the first 12 months will be free for all creators. If Apple agreed, Apple would be entitled to 30 percent of the 10 percent cut that Twitter takes from creators earning more than $100k.
Apple collects in-app purchase fees from subscription purchases that are made through the Twitter app on iOS devices. Apple earns 30 percent for the first year of a subscription, and 15 percent for each subsequent year. Apple takes the same cut of all digital purchases on the App Store, and the Cupertino company is not known for making exceptions to its rules.
Musk's request would not work with the current in-app purchase setup as Apple is collecting its fee from each subscriber who pays a creator rather than from the creator directly.
Facebook has protested the fee that Apple collects from the Facebook subscription option for creators, but Apple has not changed its policies. Facebook instead encourages people to support creators by subscribing on the web rather than on a mobile device, which is a method that Musk could use to limit the fees that Apple takes.
Musk has in the past criticized Apple's App Store fees, calling the cut that Apple collects "definitely not ok" and likening it to a "30% tax on the internet."
Article Link: Elon Musk Wants Apple to Lower Fees for 'X' Creators
I get it that mistakes are made for speed in getting stories out but this should be changed as it goes to the integrity of journalism at Macrumors - says the guy who knows nothing about journalism. 🤣
As Pulp sang it so poignantly:
"rent a flat above a shop
And cut your hair and get a job
And smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do what ever common people do
Never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
And then dance, and drink, and screw
Because there's nothing else to do"
he came from money, and was never really "in debt" because he knew the assets were there. If he wanted to found a company, money basically presented itself because he could vouch for it. Unlike someone who's actually, you know, in debt.
You don't even need to talk politics.
1. It is widely reported that under Elon Musk, Twitter's ad revenues have dropped dramatically, e.g.: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...-and-internal-forecasts-are-grim-nyt-reports/
2. The reporting around the creators programme talks about sharing _ad revenue_, not sharing _Twitter Blue revenue_, e.g.: https://techcrunch.com/2023/07/13/twitter-starts-sharing-ad-revenue-with-verified-creators/
If you want to fund a programme out of revenues that aren't there to support it, you either:
a) Cancel or pause the programme
b) Look for alternative sources of funding
I suggested that Elon chose b) - he is going to use Twitter Blue subscriptions to fund this, and to make that even remotely viable given the relatively low number of subscribers, he has to squeeze every drop of blood from the stone, i.e. get app stores to reduce their fees. The focus is on Apple because, I assume, a non-trivial number of mobile subscribers are on iOS versus Android.
Next, moving on from Twitter, I suggested it is a more efficient use of money to find more direct ways to give to creators on platforms such as Patreon, because these are all for-profit businesses and thus will all extract their share of the money. If you only have $5 to give, why let Patreon _and_ Apple take a slice of that?
What about any of that isn't valid?
What some others seem to have been suggesting it that Musk take some of his earnings and use it to "help" Twittrer/X creators financially instead of trying to get another company (Apple) to do it.
But this was not about Musk "thinking about leaving the App Store", it was his reply to a tweet regarding the possibility of Twitter (now X) being booted off the App Store (and Google Play store) and what he would do (make an alternative phone).
Read up on Musk. He started in a small startup making nothing. He earned his way to make partner and when they sold, instead of retiring, he reinvested into what became PayPal. When that sold he reinvested again in Tesla and lost money for years.
I’m not his biggest fan and I’m not saying he’s perfect; far from it. But he’s not a “Daddy’s Boy”. He started going to college in a small, community college-like university and built up an empire. Gotta give credit where it’s due.
There are some slight issues with your retelling there. If you believe Errol Musk, in 1995, he gave Elon and his brother $28K to start the company that was later known as Zip2. Elon has said it was closer to $20K, I don't know which is the truth. After Zip2 sold to Compaq in 1999, from which his personal cut was ~$22M, he started the original x.com. x.com later merged with Confinity, who had a product named PayPal - originally a way for people with PalmPilots to send each other money.
The problem with the Musk family is that Elon and Errol are both faulty narrators, who will downplay or aggrandise as it suits the story they want to tell. Needless to say, as someone who grew up actually poor, I think characterising young Elon that way is... off the mark.
Remind me again what products he profited from during COVID?? Profiteering like Bezos with Amazon, or profiteering like Pfizer and Moderna with their mRNA vaccines? Let me know.
I don't need to read up on musk, I have. He did it, yes, but he wasn't a "poor college kid".
Look at Reed Jobs these days: he starts a cancer research investment funds and the same day gets 200 million dollars from investors. He did that himself, yes. Do you think he could do that if he wasn't "the son of" with all the contacts that entails? Of course not. Does that mean he's not awesome for doing it? Of course not, it's great that he's doing it.
Same for Elon: do you think any college kid immediately gets a number of "business angels" investing in their "small startup" the day they leave college? Nope. Does that diminish what he achieved at Tesla? Nope. But he wasn't the poor college kid with student debt in the way regular Joe is a poor college kid with student debt. He was a poor college kid with student debt with a very wealthy and connected father.
Yeah, I don’t think Steve would’ve allowed that. He would’ve probably removed Twitter/X from the App Store for having a “stupid name”.
Yup.
Lies run strong in that family.
I wish my daddy owned an emerald mine.
I would have become a billionaire all the while being 100% less jerk.
Lies run strong in that family.
I wish my daddy owned an emerald mine.
I would have become a billionaire all the while being 100% less jerk.
I don't see a 28K investment as major. $200K, yes.
I do see your point either way.
Well, just because he’s rich and successful doesn’t always mean he is smart though.
Like what’s the point of him buying Twitter for $44B and then out of nowhere changing its name to X ? He killed a 17-year-old well-known and recognized brand by choosing the most ridiculous brand name ever. He could’ve at least changed only the corporation name to X while keeping “Twitter” as the name of the platform (just like the change from Facebook to Meta) or he could’ve probably changed it to something like “Twitter X” but no, he basically killed the name “Twitter”. Remember that he tried to do the same thing with PayPal which ended up getting him fired.
Twitter was already dying when he bought it, but he ruined it even more with his nonsensical decisions. From adding the “blue checkmark” Twitter blue subscription which has allowed lots of fake bot accounts to be verified, to limiting the number of the tweets you can view in a day and the numbers of Private Messages you can send in a day (if you don’t have the Twitter Blue subscription). This place is currently full of bot accounts, I keep finding them everywhere on the platform. And he probably won’t ban them because they pay for Twitter via the Twitter Blue subscription.
At this point, what does it even mean to be verified on Twitter anymore ? Being “verified” always used to indicate that this is an original account/business to prevent impersonating, NOT that “This account pays for Twitter”.
Oh and not to mention, him firing so many Twitter employees even some of the most loyal ones.. And now him completely changing the brand name to a single letter which makes no sense at all.
All of his decisions for Twitter have been very chaotic and unreasonable. He might be the richest man in the world, but it seems like he clearly doesn’t know how to run a company.
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That is the biggest plus of all this; Enron has shown once and for all billionaires are not more intelligent than you or I.
So much of their path is who their parents are, the status of family, luck, and luck and luck.
The farce that he is self-made can be best described as Neil Armstrong getting to the moon all by himself.
So much of their path is who their parents are, the status of family, luck, and luck and luck.
The farce that he is self-made can be best described as Neil Armstrong getting to the moon all by himself.
No one is really buying that Xbox-graphics "truck". Musk lost a ton of goodwill in the past year and his current cars are mainly for 55 year old Boomers. They are the new Prius drivers. So slow
A few points…
Elon is not an engineer, nor is he a physicist. He’s no mathematician. What he did is BUY into Tesla and then get rid of the founders. That being said, since he effectively ran the company from the model S and beyond, I’ll give HIM, the engineers he hired, credit for all vehicles beyond the roadster.
Musk said Full Self Driving is safer than a human in 2019. Wrong. He is no where near solving FSD. He continues to lie about this.
As for Semi, he claimed $0.07 per mile stating that the charging stations would only charge from solar and thus would undercut diesel, quoting 7 cents per mile. He is wrong again. More like 50 cents. I can think of a few ways to charge a semi very quickly, as I am sure half the readers here can also. Hint: it’s not rocket science. The engineering problems to solve are recharging and cost of ownership. If the semi takes longer to charge and the cost per mile is no different, Musk won’t be disrupting anything at all in the area of semi.
Semi acceleration is impressive. Anything electric will be given a good power pack.
Charging network. This is indeed a marvel and Musk deserves credit here. Most charging stations seem to be a disaster where as Tesla charging stations just work for the most part.
Musk has had a few key successes, but at the same time, he makes many more claims which are not founded in reality. If you really start to objectively listen to him, one thing becomes very clear. He’s not really an engineer at all. He’s essentially the purse. He created a lot of noise and got a lot of good talented people interested in working for him and it’s easy to see why. The pace of innovation is Fast and loose. People want to make a difference and the sooner the better. I believe that ”was” the attraction. A reusable primary stage rocket, which does indeed work is an achievemenT by anyone’s standard. And getting a car company off the ground despite the massive naked shorting is also an achievement.
But here is the thing. If you seriously go back and watch every event, and listen to what he says about full self driving, you will see how wrong he is about it. Now this is not my opinion. It is fact and it is backed up by how often he is wrong. He has been saying for Eight years, that he’d be surprised if it was completed within six months to a year, knowing full well that he directed staff to edit videos to give the appearance of better full self driving. That’s fraud. That’s why I tell you that if you just listen to the next date he gives, and write that date on the wall, I will guarantee that he wilL miss that date. How can I be so sure that he will? Because I know for a fact that he is slightly less that level 2 currently. I know for a fact that he “WAS” still training the car’s input with people that he then fired. In other words, he’s making zero progress on this right now. If you don’t even have the tools to make it happen, guess what will happen? NOTHING. Write that date on the wall, and watch him miss it. Then write the next date on the wall, and watch him miss that too. And then explain to me how I am so wrong. I dare you to reply back with that first new date here. We can all watch him miss it. And miss the next one, and the one after that, too. He’ll keep missing them until he gets serious about solving the problem the only way it can be solved.
Next, this being a multi-planetary species. What a great goal to have. Except it’s not real. And even if it were, Mars is not the answer. There is no magnetosphere. That means that even if only two nukes could warm the planet, which is wrong, it will take over 1000 do that if it worked at all. But let’s pretend it did work. The atmosphere would erode away anyway. Why?? No magnetosphere to keep it. The next problem is gravity. There isn’t much of it. If you could live on mars, you’d atrophy on the trip to mars so much so that your heart wouldn’t be strong enough to pump blood on Earth. You wouldn’t survive the trip anyway, but if you did somehow you couldn’t return to Earth anyway. Earth would easily overwhelm your body and kill you.
Landing on Mars would be extremely difficult. The force on the soil will blow it all over the place. You’d need an Extremely strong platform, but luckily, there is less gravity, so not as difficult to leave the planet. You wouldn’t need 42 raptors to escape Mars gravity. But you’d still need a platform. Without a platform, you’d blow the ground below you all over the place, and in the seconds it will take to lift off, your ship might tip over and fall down. If that happens, massive explosion and everyone dies. So now you have the chicken and the egg problem. You need a platform, but landing a massive heave ship with building materials will be difficult because there is no platform. So what you bring, must stay until such time as you have a platform. So how do get there with materials to build a platform?
Problem by problem you will have to work out the logistics and making a mars missing possible. And guess what… We‘re not hearing any of this from Musk. Why not? Because there is no mars mission. Do you think we just built a rover and threw at mars??? No, we didn’t. We thought of several ways to land it. A giant balloon Package that essentially hits the planet and bounces until coming to a stop and then the rover pops out. An elevator system that descends the rover from a giant parachute and so on. All of this takes a long time to engineer.
How long until Mars will be in the right alignment with Earth for a launch? How long is the flight time? That’s why I try to tell you that you should look at how long space exploration takes us now. How long did it take to build the James Webb telescope. How long did it take Musk to built a human transport to the space station, which is just in low earth orbit? When you see those numbers, ask yourself how long it will take to build a platform on Mars. One year? Five years? Twenty years?? What number would you assign to this task?? Now consider that Musk is 52. Let’s assume you give building a landing pad on Mars twenty years. Then Musk will be 72 by the time he can start the first test of landing on that finished platform. Maybe you believe twenty years is too long. Great, what estimate to give, and give a reason you believe it. Site examples of other tasks that give you reason to believe your answer is accurate.
Once you start to reason this issue, ask yourself how you would terraform mars? How would you warm it. How would you keep that atmosphere without a magnetosphere? How would solve the problem of getting people there. After 42 raptors fire off on Earth and set out for Mars, how much damage would be done to those engines? What kind of shape would they be in over the course of the flight? Remember, they are filled with liquid oxygen the whole time and still have to land on Mars and still need enough fuel to come back. What method would you employ to make that a human-safe endeavor? How long will all that take to engineer? What timeline would you give these engineering problems?
Next, let’s discuss StarLink. How many satellites are needed? What cost are all these satellites and how long will these satellites Last? They last five years by the way. So after five yours you will be deorbitting 42,000 satellites and launching another 42,000. How much?? What does each customer pay for the service, and what is the cost to maintain this? Again, I’m asking you to use your own common sense. If you think this is a money-maker, tell me why?
So I know what you are thinking, okay, Sasha here knows better than Elon Musk. Why would Musk be launching all these satellites if this were not a solid business?? Why indeed? That’s my question to you. Why did Elizabeth Holmes Pretend she needed a single drop of blood to perform many tests when the rest of the world could not? Why did smart investors invest in it if it wasn’t real?? Answer me this… Was it real or was it a fraud? It was a fraud, wasn’t it. So all those smart investors, why did they fall for it?
Why did Kevin O’Leary Tell you Sam Friedman was the best trader on the planet and his pagents are world renowned at compliance and yet zero compliance was adhered to and the trades were all stupid he lost $40 billion in record time? Kevin O’Leary is stupid? All those investors are stupid?? Well? What actually happened? Did Kevin lose his money? Yes, he did? Why? Didn’t he do due diligence? No he didn’t. Why not? He assumed someone else did. So this kid basically fooled everyone?? YES.
So again, why do you think Musk can makes Mars work? When you just use some basic common sense, you see he can’t. So why talk about it?? It sounds good, doesn’t it?? You respect the man that is brining us to Mars, right? Except he isn’t. He can’t.
I’m 55. I’m old enough to know ******** when I see it.
In other words, your opinions are based on irrational emotion and not on reason and logic.
How long did it take from start to finish?
The moon is right there. It doesn’t take years of waiting for the moon to be in the right position in relation to earth. How many years does it take for Mars to be in the correct position for a launch from Earth?
How many test flights will it take to perfect a mars landing with Starship?
Can you land upright with Starship?
What happens when all those engines ignite on Mars without a platform to stand on?
How long will it take to build a platform on Mars capable of accepting the landing of Starship?
BTW: Robots will build the first infrastructure and they don’t have to liftoff from Mars.
It’s the same thing basically. Advertisement with no verification = not seen as legit account or just a scam. No one will trust it. Hence it’s same thing as kill switch.
Just take a look at site formerly known as Twitter, it’s filled with unverified advertisers showcasing fake or scammy products now that big time advertisers have permanently left or not spending lot of money.
Nope.
Musk HATES Apple. Not having CarPlay is deliberate move by him, out of spite basically.
He was forced to put Apple Music integration after the Tesla board forced him. Same reason why Musk still uses iPhone, because the Tesla board forced him since the OS was more secure than Android.
Moment he takes Tesla private, he will remove Apple Music from Tesla and Musk will start making “Tesla” branded phone with his own OS.