For elected officials who want to propose Big Tech reform, Arizona state Rep. Regina Cobb (R) has a warning: They have to prepare for the lobbying and intimidation that comes with it.
“I’m trying to be as honest and frank as I possibly can to make it known that these are the pressures that are going to come on your legislators,” Cobb said in an interview with the Prospect. “You gotta have a good champion; someone that’s gonna go the distance with them and I hope they do have that.”
Cobb sponsored Arizona’s state House bill HB 2005, to reform how mobile app stores collect their commission from apps with in-app purchases. Currently, most apps that cost money to install, or have in-app stores or subscriptions available, pay Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store a fee of 15 or 30 percent to process that payment. Amazon and Uber are notable exceptions to this. Other large subscription-based companies, like Spotify or Netflix, only let consumers pay for their services on a computer-accessed website to avoid the large commission cut. But most companies that need access to mobile phone users are forced to pay the commission, or risk being kicked off the app store all together.
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