Pocket Casts podcast app removed from Chinese iOS App Store
Popular podcast app Pocket Casts has been removed from the Chinese iOS App Store, the company has revealed. It tweeted the news that Apple had removed the app “at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China” and that Pocket Casts would not be “censoring podcast content at their [CAC’s] request”.
While information at the time of writing was slim, it appears the CAC contacted Apple with an unspecified request for Pocket Casts to censor or remove content from its platform. Given Pocket Casts’ enormous library – practically every free podcast in the world – and the Chinese government’s Communist leanings, it appears that Pocket Casts has been removed from China’s App Store following its refusal to do so.
We understand this means that it’s unlikely that our iOS App will be available in China, but feel it’s a necessary step to take for any company that values the open distribution model that makes podcasting special.
Pocket Casts said it was contacted by Appleabout the impending removal two days before the app was pulled. In 2018, Applepulled the far-right podcast Info Wars from Pocket Casts, though this also happened across many media distribution platforms.
The Pocket Casts app is a popular alternative third-party podcast player famed for its good looking UI and granular podcast subscription control. After being a paid app since its launch in 2010,it went free last yearand moved all its existing subscribers to its Pocket Casts Plus tier for free. Plus now costs $1.14 per month for new users and adds desktop apps, cloud storage, file upload and playback for other media and theme and icon editing.
Author: Henry Burrell, Contributor
Previously Tech Advisor’s Phones Editor, Henry covers and reviews every smartphone worth knowing about. He spends a lot of time moving between different handsets and shouting at WhatsApp to support multiple devices at once.
