Skip to main content

Apple removes Pocket Casts from the Chinese app store under government pressure

In its latest censorship move for China, Apple has taken down podcast app Pocket Casts from the Chinese App Store. Pocket Casts, in a series of tweets, claimed that Apple acted at the behest of a request from the Cyberspace Administration of China, the local regulatory watchdog that oversees the information available on the internet in the country.

Pocket Casts adds that it was “contacted by the CAC through Apple around 2 days before the app was removed from the store” and that it won’t comply with any censorship orders from the Chinese authorities to return to the country’s App Store.

In a Twitter reply, Pocket Casts wrote that it wasn’t provided any specifics even after it asked for clarification. The only reason offered by Apple was that it includes “content that is illegal in China as determined by the CAC”.

Pocket Casts told Digital Trends that it was “given very little notice of this removal (only 2 days)” and asked by Apple to “contact the CAC for more information.”

Incidentally, the pandemic simulator app, Plague Inc. was booted off the Chinese app store earlier this year on these exact grounds too.

“We believe podcasting is and should remain an open medium, free of government censorship,” the developers wrote in a tweet. Pocket Casts says it won’t be backtracking on its decision to return to the Chinese App Store since “it’s a necessary step to take for any company that values the open distribution model that makes podcasting special.”

At the time of writing, Apple hadn’t released a public statement or responded to a request for comment sent by Digital Trends.

Shortly after Pocket Casts was pulled from the App Store, another podcast app, Castro Podcasts was taken down in China as well. The team behind Castro Podcasts said it wasn’t offered any specifics by Apple and suspects it was likely because of its “support of the protests in the Discover tab.” In a tweet, Castro Podcasts claimed the Chinese market represented 10% of its total base but a “much smaller percent” of its paid subscriber base.

Pocket Casts confirmed that it’s in touch with Castro but at this stage, they aren’t “working together beyond that.”

“No specifics were requested, we were just linked to cac.gov.cn, which has no apparent version written in English and told we had illegal content up in China,” said general manager Jesse Herlitz, in a statement emailed to Digital Trends.

On several occasions in the past, Apple has stepped over the lines of freedom of speech and conformed to China’s censorship requests. In October 2019, the company took down the news app Quartz as it was actively covering the Hong Kong protests. Both the Quartz app and website to date are still not available in China.

A month later, Apple also removed HKmap.live, a crowdsourced mapping app that was being employed by Hong Kong protesters to flag the live locations of police and street closures. In a statement, Apple CEO, Tim Cook defended the takedown by arguing the app was being “used in ways that endanger law enforcement and residents in Hong Kong.” “The app displays police locations and we have verified with the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau that the app has been used to target and ambush police, threaten public safety, and criminals have used it to victimize residents in areas where they know there is no law enforcement,” he added.

Editors' Recommendations

Shubham Agarwal
Shubham Agarwal is a freelance technology journalist from Ahmedabad, India. His work has previously appeared in Firstpost…
Your next Apple Pencil could select colors from real-world objects
Drawing with the Apple Pencil on the iPad Pro (2022).

Apple recently filed for a patent that indicates a major feature update is coming to a possible future generation of the Apple Pencil. The patent is for image sensors that can detect colors on real-world surfaces, plus their physical texture. If implemented, new Apple Pencils could make it easier than ever before for artists and designers to find and match color samples without needing to search for them digitally.

The patent, spotted first by Patently Apple, indicates that the sensor would be toward to tip of the pencil, meaning that to get a color sample, all someone would need to do is position the "drawing" end of the smart pencil toward an object to seamlessly sample its color and texture onto a paired Apple device. If brought to Apple Pencils, the feature would be a huge step forward for digital artists.

Read more
Sorry, but allowing third-party iPhone app stores is a bad idea
Apple Arcade page on the Apple Store as seen on the iPhone 14 Pro

Apple has always been known to have tight control over both its hardware and software, such as the iPhone and the iOS that powers it. However, it seems that the European Union continues to get more and more involved in regulating Apple’s most popular device, the iPhone.

So far, the EU has set a deadline for Apple to replace the Lightning port with USB-C by 2024, and more recently, it raised the possibility of opening up iOS to allow for sideloading and alternative app stores from third parties. Though this may seem like a good thing at first, I’m not so sure that’s entirely true. At the very least, it will cause some complications.
The App Store is a secure and trusted place

Read more
Apple may do the unthinkable — allow third-party iPhone app stores
App Store displayed on an iPhone 14 Pro against a pink background

Ever since 2008, Apple has only allowed its own App Store on the iPhone. In the past, if you wanted alternative digital storefronts, you’d have to jailbreak your device. But in response to impending regulations from the European Union, Apple may be allowing alternative app stores on the iPhone and iPad in the near future — potentially as soon as iOS 17 in 2023.

According to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, this will be the very first time that Apple will allow third-party app stores on the iPhone. It seems that Apple is already dedicating a “significant amount of resources to the companywide endeavor.”

Read more