Apple Allows 50% Fee Rise | @ElonMusk Fans: 70% Fake | Microsoft Salaries up by 100%?

Welcome to The Long View—where we peruse the news of the week and strip it to the essentials. Let’s work out what really matters.

This week: Apple lets devs increase subscriptions “without consent,” Twitter has more than 19% spam accounts, and we dig into the claim that Microsoft is about to double salaries.

1. Tim’s Plan Might Backfire

First up this week: Apple will let you hike recurring app fees by 50% per year. Subscription prices can go way up without asking users if they agree—although you do need to tell them.

Analysis: Subscription friction

Apple’s stated goal is to reduce friction when it comes time to renew a subscription. However, it might have the opposite effect at initial signup. It’s inevitably going to cause customer dissatisfaction.

David Price is right: Apple allows subscription apps to increase auto-renewal price without user consent

[In] a change to the App Store rules, subscription apps can now increase the price and carry on auto-renewing without users giving explicit consent. Apple is at pains to downplay any concerns that this will lead to exploitation.
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[In] what now seems to have been a pilot scheme Apple ran for the Disney+ app … users of this app were notified of a price increase, rather than asked for their consent. [Devs] won’t be allowed to increase the price more than once per year … and these rises will be capped at $5 … or $50 for an annual subscription, and 50 percent of the current price.
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Does Google also do this? No. … This is a big call. … It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Will users wear it? No way, says a steaming turbineseaplane:

Price increases should require new agreements. “Watch for notifications so you don’t miss price increases,” is supposed to be good for users? This is gaslighting 101 from Apple.
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They don’t really care who they screw, as long as they get their cut. … Despite what Apple claims, nothing about this is “better for users.” The gall of their actions is becoming increasingly breathtaking. They weren’t lying about Services, Services and more Services revenue.

But Apple can’t do right for doing wrong, thinks @JohnWilson:

On the one hand, Apple doesn’t allow devs to do enough and treats them as though they can’t handle their customers with care. On the other hand, Apple gives devs too much rope. Which is it?

2. Fake Twitter Accounts—far More Than 5%

A study concludes that over 19.4% of active Twitter accounts are fake or spam. This is a lot more than the “under 5%” that Twitter claims.

Analysis: Grist for Elon’s Mill

This matters because Elon Musk has put his purchase of Twitter on hold, stating that he wants Twitter to prove that under 5% of users are fake. Whether this is a genuine question in Mister Musk’s mind, or a cynical negotiating strategy, it’s important to keep a lid on user-generated fakery and spamminess.

Rand Fishkin: 19.42% of Active Accounts Are Fake or Spam

[In] a rigorous, joint analysis of 44,058 public Twitter accounts active in the last 90 days … 19.42%—nearly four times Twitter’s Q4 2021 estimate—fit a conservative definition of fake or spam accounts. … On Friday, Mr. Musk tweeted that his acquisition of Twitter was “on hold” due to questions about what percent of Twitter’s users are spam or fake. … We cannot know how Twitter (or Mr. Musk) might choose to classify these accounts, but we bias to a relatively conservative interpretation of “Spam/Fake” …  (i.e., our analysis likely undercounts).
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Given the unique interest in Mr. Musk’s account, and the central role it played in triggering this report, we felt it wise to include a complete analysis of the nearly hundred million accounts that follow @ElonMusk. … 70.23% of @ElonMusk followers are unlikely to be authentic, active users who see his tweets … but we do not believe or suggest that Mr. Musk is directly responsible for acquiring these suspicious followers.
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We are not disputing Twitter’s claim. There’s no way to know what criteria Twitter uses [and it] likely has unknowable processes that we cannot replicate. … We invite anyone interested to replicate the process we’ve used. … Our model for identifying fake accounts comes from a machine learning process run over many tens of thousands of known spam (and real) Twitter accounts.

At which point, the Twitter CEO let rip. Over to @ParagA:

We are strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can. … The most advanced spam campaigns … are sophisticated and hard to catch. … We suspend over half a million spam accounts every day, usually before any of you even see them.
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Our actual internal estimates for the last four quarters were all well under 5%. … This specific estimation can be performed externally, given the critical need to use both public and private information (which we can’t share).

Ahh, so nobody can reproduce Twitter’s analysis. That’s convenient—isn’t it, c7DJTLrn?

Riiiight, and Craig Wright claims to have proof of being Satoshi Nakamoto but won’t show anybody. I don’t know how good of a CEO Parag is, but he’s not a very good bull****ter.

3. Microsoft “is Doubling Salaries”

Breathless headlines rippled around the web yesterday, claiming Microsoft employees pay is about to go up by almost 100%. That’s amazing—if true.

Narrator: It wasn’t

What Microsoft is actually doing is doubling the budget for salary increases. So, instead of getting an 5% rise, you might now get 10% (actually a bit less than that, because math). But with inflation rearing its head, your real-terms increase will actually be less.

Todd Bishop: Microsoft plan for ‘significant additional investment’ in employee compensation

Microsoft plans to nearly double its global budget for merit-based salary increases, and increase its range for annual stock-based compensation by at least 25%. [It was] detailed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in an email to employees [and] follows Amazon’s decision to more than double its maximum base pay range for corporate and tech workers:
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“Time and time again, we see that our talent is in high demand. … That’s why we’re making long-term investments in each of you. … Specifically, we are nearly doubling the global merit budget. … We are also increasing Annual Stock ranges by at least 25 percent for all levels 67 and below.”

The reference to “levels 67 and below” translates generally into employees up to and including senior directors. … Microsoft is making the move as its 2022 fiscal year draws to a close, ending June 30.

So they didn’t double salaries, gigel82?

No they didn’t. … What they did is increase the “merit” budget by up to double.
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Merit is their annual increase in base pay, which is usually 2%–4%, so doubling that means an increase in base pay of 4%–8%, which is still below the inflation rate. Also, stock ranges are roughly ⅓ of competition … so an increase of 25% is insultingly low—might as well be nothing at all.
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I talked with friends at Microsoft. … None of [them] are happy about this and they said they’d been happier with no announcement at all.

ELI5? Explaining like we’re five, it’s ShanghaiBill:

Microsoft is not doubling salaries. … Microsoft should give their PR dept a raise for spinning their stinginess into a story about how generous they are.

The Moral of the Story:
Expectation is the root of all heartache

You have been reading The Long View by Richi Jennings. You can contact him at @RiCHi or tlv@richi.uk.

Image: Vincent van Zalinge (via Unsplash; leveled and cropped)