Podcast Apps Pocket Casts and Castro Removed From Apple's China Store (techcrunch.com) 12
Before June each year, content and media platforms in China anxiously anticipate a new round of censorship as the government tightens access to information in the lead-up to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. This year, Chinese users lost access to two podcast apps -- Pocket Casts and Castro Podcasts. From a report: Neither apps are searchable within Apple's Chinese App Store at the time of writing. Pocket Casts, which was acquired by a group of American public radio companies in 2018, tweeted that it "has been removed from the Chinese App Store by Apple, at the request of the Cyberspace Administration of China," the country's internet watchdog. When Pocket Casts asked for clarification, Apple's app review team told the podcast firm to contact the CAC directly, an email seen by TechCrunch showed.
"We will most likely contact them to find out more, though we weren't given that option to stop the app from being removed, only as a potential solution to have it re-instated. The very small amount of warning we were given between there being a problem, and our app being completely removed from the Chinese app store was quite alarming," a spokesperson for Pocket Casts told TechCrunch. "We assumed that what they'd want us to remove are specific podcasts, and possible some of the Black Lives Matter content we'd posted."
"We will most likely contact them to find out more, though we weren't given that option to stop the app from being removed, only as a potential solution to have it re-instated. The very small amount of warning we were given between there being a problem, and our app being completely removed from the Chinese app store was quite alarming," a spokesperson for Pocket Casts told TechCrunch. "We assumed that what they'd want us to remove are specific podcasts, and possible some of the Black Lives Matter content we'd posted."
Crackdown? (Score:2)
Calling it the "Tiananmen Square crackdown" is an injustice, it was a massacre of protesting students by the Chinese military.
Re: (Score:1)
They're retconning it as a "crackdown" to appease the MAGAts, because Dear Orange Leader is a fan of the massacre. https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
Re:Crackdown? (Score:4, Informative)
Trump made that comment in a Playboy interview in 1990. Here is the whole comment;
"When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it. Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength," Trump replied. "That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak...as being spit on by the rest of the world."
While it's classic Trump, and I know it's easy to take what he says and manipulate it without context, in this case he was referring to the strength of nations. He goes on to say that Russia was a mess and ripe for a revolution. Nice try though....
Re: (Score:1)
I'm floored that someone could equate the massacre of unarmed civilians to strength.
It's power without restraint, much worse than weakness.
Re:Crackdown? (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks, Chinese government shill.
The catastrophe is the ongoing life under dictatorship. Freed, people would rapidly rise to the occasion of feeding, a process the dictatorship struggled with for decades and now, incomprehensively, are praised for as a savior by you.
Between that and your .sig, which does not map well with communist dictator sympathies, I hypothesize you are a state-sponsored "shitstirrer*".
* A technical term
Re: (Score:3)
'Gone With the Wind" was taken off HBO too.
No it wasn't.
It was temporarily removed, and then returned with a disclaimer added to it with a "framing its shortcomings in historical context."
https://www.vanityfair.com/hol... [vanityfair.com]
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/1... [cnbc.com]
Re: (Score:1)
'Gone With the Wind" was taken off HBO too. Fuck it. They should just cut the power
That's not censorship. The government was not involved here, so who gives a shit. The culture is changing. In the past lenny bruce and george carlin were sent to jail for their stand up acts. The religious right and the nanny left were talking at length about passing legislation controlling music lyrics. Today a private company is making a decision about some shitty piece art it wants to promote on its platform.
The new world order of the US, in this respect at least, is way better than than it used to be.
You should have censored yourself (Score:2)
"We will most likely contact them to find out more, though we weren't given that option to stop the app from being removed, only as a potential solution to have it re-instated. The very small amount of warning we were given between there being a problem, and our app being completely removed from the Chinese app store was quite alarming," a spokesperson for Pocket Casts told TechCrunch. "We assumed that what they'd want us to remove are specific podcasts, and possible some of the Black Lives Matter content w
Castro ? (Score:2)
Julian ? Joaquin?
Or Fidel and Raul from Cuba