Facebook is putting up paywalls around some content on its site and driving users to publisher pages to buy subscriptions, but a dispute over the revenue generated is keeping the tool off Apple devices, Recode reports. In discussions that have gone on for months, Apple has demanded as much as 30 percent of the subscription revenue generated — in keeping with its typical cut of in-app subscriptions — where Facebook wants to leave all of the revenue with the publishers.
The tool provides publishers with the option to allow users 10 free articles a month before throwing up a paywall around content or another method that only puts paywalls around individual articles, but because of Apple’s insistence that it be paid for any money collected through an iOS app, Facebook is launching the tool exclusively on Android devices in the meantime. Both Facebook and Apple declined to comment on the discussions, so it’s unclear how Facebook’s iOS app will handle the articles in question with no agreement in place.
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