Reuters:

Facebook Inc on Thursday told Reuters that Apple Inc rejected its attempt to tell users the iPhone maker would take a 30% cut of sales in a new online events feature, forcing Facebook to remove the message to get the tool to users.

And:

Facebook said that Apple cited an App Store rule that bars developers from showing “irrelevant” information to users.

“Now more than ever, we should have the option to help people understand where money they intend for small businesses actually goes. Unfortunately Apple rejected our transparency notice around their 30% tax but we are still working to make that information available inside the app experience,” Facebook said in a statement.

Speaking of disingenuous, that last sentence just leaves a bad taste all around. There’s an implication that Facebook is a champion of transparency.

But I digress:

Facebook earlier this month said it planned to roll out a new tool that would let online influencers and other businesses host paid online events as a way to offset revenue lost during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The company said it had asked Apple to waive the 30% fee the iPhone maker charges for in-app purchases so Facebook could pass on all of the events revenue to business owners, but that Apple declined.

Facebook had aimed to provide a notice of Apple’s cut to users, according to mock-ups it released at the time, but Reuters found on Thursday that the promised message was not present on the new events feature.

On the surface, this does look bad for Apple. Did Apple actually prevent Facebook from transparently laying out the fee structure for in-app purchase? Or is there more to this story?

Hoping for a response from Apple telling its side of this story.