Google suspended a popular Android podcast app because it catalogs COVID-19 content

Podcast Addict, an Android podcast app with millions of users, was suspended over the weekend because it lists COVID-19 content. The app’s creator, Xavier Guillemane, tells The Verge that on Saturday, Google suspended and removed the ads from his nine-year-old app because it violated a new policy for developers that requires any app with a reference to COVID-19 to be “published, commissioned, or authorized by official government entities or public health organizations.”

Guillemane’s app catalogs publicly available podcast RSS feeds, which he doesn’t control. The content includes news shows, talk shows, and a variety of programming that mentions the pandemic and virus. He says Google told him he’d need to address this problem and then...

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