While I’m generally onboard with Apple and Google trying to prevent the spread of misinformation around COVID-19, there are some things that simply don’t make sense. For instance yesterday Google suspended the Podcast Addict app due to it “referencing COVID-19, or related terms” without being a governmental or health organisation:
Google has just suspended Podcast Addict again. This time for having Podcasts about Covid 19… Are you for real Google. Can you please check your own Google Podcast App, your search engine,Youtube, … first — @PodcastAddict
If the reason for this suspension is really that you can subscribe to podcasts that talk about health topics then Google should probably also suspend their own podcast player, YouTube, and so on.
While this doesn’t seem to affect existing users, new users probably cannot install the app from the Play Store but have to resort to directly installing it e.g. from the developers Google Drive. Additionally, Google Ads also seem to be disabled according to the developer so not only are user numbers at best stagnating, but also no ad-revenue is coming in… This is just bad.
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