Pocket Casts is Showing Ads To People Who Paid For an Ad-free App (theverge.com) 14
Pocket Casts is being flogged for showing advertisements to legacy users who were promised an ad-free experience. From a report: The first reports started to appear in early September in the Pocket Casts support forum and subreddit. The issue is a bug, according to Matt Mullenweg, the CEO of Pocket Casts' parent company Automattic, and will be corrected. Pocket Casts launched as a purchase-only app in 2010, charging users a one-time download fee of up to $10, depending on the OS and platform. The service later switched to a subscription-based model and made the app available for free in 2019. After backlash from users, the company gave anyone who paid for the web or desktop apps before the pricing changes free lifetime access to Pocket Casts Plus, its ad-free premium subscription service.
The app was acquired by Automattic in 2021, and the Pocket Casts Lifetime memberships were rebranded to "Pocket Casts Champion" in August 2024.
The app was acquired by Automattic in 2021, and the Pocket Casts Lifetime memberships were rebranded to "Pocket Casts Champion" in August 2024.
I bought the app in 2018 (Score:4)
Since I didn't buy the web player, I'm not grandfathered into anything and had ads in an app that I paid for. I deleted it and moved to AntennaPod.
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No refund?
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No refund, and I doubt that they'd give me one years later.
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Lobby for stronger consumer laws.
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I moved from BeyondPod when it was abandoned years ago. I tried every podcast player on the market at the time to try to find a replacement, including Pocket Casts, but most of them lacked the features that I wanted. Then I found Podcast Addict and that was the one, I have been pretty happy with it ever since.
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Matt Mullenweg being shitty? (Score:4, Insightful)
Whodathunkit
AntennaPod (Score:1)
Ditch this and use AntennaPod [antennapod.org].
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I've tried to switch to Antenna Pod but it just doesn't work the way I want. With Pocket Casts I can go into my not-yet listened-to feed and remove anything I want from it, either automatically after so many episodes or after listening, or manually (just to clean it up and make it not so cluttered). Not mark them simply as listened to, but remove them from the list. I can also show a list of only podcasts that are downloaded. It's ultra configurable that way compared to AntennaPod. I find the AntennaPod
Straight out of Black Mirror (Score:3)