Apple has removed two podcast apps from its Chinese app store, following government pressure to censor content.
Pocket Casts and Castro were both pulled from distribution in China after the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) demanded that the apps stop allowing content that breached the country’s restrictive speech laws.
“We believe podcasting is and should remain an open medium, free of government censorship,” Pocket Casts said. “As such we won’t be censoring podcast content at their request.
“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 the CAC through Apple “around two days before the app was removed from the store”.
Castro Podcasts said it was not given a specific reason for its removal, but that it thought it may have been to do with the promotion of Hong Kong’s protests in its “discover” section.
Podcasting poses a problem for Chinese censors since, unlike streaming platforms and social networks, podcasts are hosted across servers controlled by innumerable companies, with a simple document called an RSS feed used by podcasting apps to download new episodes. There is no central authority for Chinese censors to demand compliance from.
Apple’s own podcasting app remains available in China, but with strict limitations: searches are filtered, and the ability to browse by category is disabled.
GreatFire, an organisation that campaigns against Chinese web censorship, called the removal “a worrying trend”.
A spokesperson tweeted: “Apple has no problem removing apps at the request of the Chinese authorities (almost 3,000 in China alone!) but why do they think it necessary to act as a go-between/messenger/negotiator/babysitter between [the Cyberspace Administration of China] and app developers?”
Apple has drawn repeated criticism for its closeness to Chinese authorities, which critics argue goes beyond legal necessity. In October, for instance, the company removed an app that Hong Kong protesters were using to co-ordinate, alleging that it broke the law. But neither the company nor the Hong Kong police were able to say which law the app broke, and pro-democracy legislators attacked the move as “a political decision to suppress freedom and human rights”.
Apple has been contacted for comment.
