Apple Pulls Pocket Casts and Castro From Chinese App Store

Sam Byford, The Verge:

Pocket Casts tells The Verge that Apple didn’t provide specifics on which content violated Chinese law upon request, instead suggesting that the team reach out to the Cyberspace Administration of China directly. The app was removed around two days after Apple contacted the developer. China represented its seventh biggest market, Pocket Casts says, and it was considered to be growing.

Castro, another iPhone podcast app, was also recently pulled from China’s App Store. The developers say China made up 10 percent of its user base, although it accounted for a smaller percentage of paying subscribers. Apple didn’t provide Castro with specifics on what content fell foul of Chinese regulations, either.

Apple’s own Podcasts app remains available in China, but its built-in directory of podcasts has been heavily censored to comply with Chinese law.

Overcast is architected in a way that makes the app dependent on overcast.fm servers to be useful, and those servers have been blocked by the Great Firewall for years, so there’s no need for China to ban the app.

★ Thursday, 11 June 2020