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Comment by crispinb | Hacker News Reader

This strikes me as potentially bad news. PocketCasts is a great little app, with the characteristic advantages of being produced by a small indy outfit with no agenda beyond selling a good quality product for cash. I'll keep an open mind, but it's hard to imagine it maintaining its current user-focus and content neutrality while under the thumb of content-producers.

[Edit: there's a blog post on the topic from ShiftyJelly: https://blog.shiftyjelly.com/. It's a little misjudged in tone, maintaining their jokiness which has been enjoyable in other contexts but feels more like misdirection when a user is hoping for information on the future. Perhaps mildly reassuring though]

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I mean, it wasn't acquired by a for-profit publishing house or media company (e.g. a music label, Netflix, Amazon, etc.), it's NPR. They aren't for-profit, and they generally have pretty solid products (or at least content) in my experience.

I'm not gonna say that there isn't cause for concern that an organization like NPR might not be very good at this sort of development or product, but I don't think naked greed or exploitation needs to be a significant concern. And more than any content producer I can think of, I'd trust NPR to maintain relative neutrality towards external content.

As I wrote, I'm keeping an open mind. But in the absence of information more specific than Russell's rather fluffy & evasive blog post, it's entirely reasonable to be suspicious. Don't forget that for most humans, NPR isn't just a non-profit: it's a foreign government agency (and a very corporate-infected one compared to the best public broadcasters like the BBC or ABC).

@peterjlee's other post here also suggests also that NPR's own current app is spyware. I have no idea whether or not that's true, but if so, it augurs badly.

We'll see. I'd be delighted if my suspicions turn out to be entirely wrong.

NPR isn't really a government agency. They only get about 20% of their funding from the government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPR#Funding And regardless, it was not solely bought by NPR but by a combination of NPR, WNYC, WBEZ, and This American Life (two independent radio stations and a program producer).

I also wouldn't call NPR's app spyware by any means unless you call the vast majority of apps and websites spyware too.

> They only get about 20% of their funding from the government:

Your source implies less than 17% in 2009 and declining since; 50% of NPR funding was from member stations, who in turn get 6% of their funding directly from federal, state, or local government, 10% from the CPB which is mostly federally funded, and 14% from universities (which have varying shares of government funding), and 2% of NPR funding was from competitive government grants that it wins. And since 2009, your source notes several expansions of non-government revenue initiatives for NPR.

Fair point on the group purchase. It still puts the app largely in the hands of content producers, which is a potential conflict of interest.

> I also wouldn't call NPR's app spyware by any means unless you call the vast majority of apps and websites spyware too

The 'Spywareness' that matters is relative: it's not so much a matter of whether information is collected at all, but rather how much & what information, in what form, for what purpose, and who gets access. The move from an indy content-neutral app to one owned by content providers changes the incentives significantly.

We don't know what will happen, so let's face it, anything we write is just speculation. But it would hardly be unduly cynical to suspect the direction to be towards more surveillance, and less support for the openness of podcasting.

Its an app that downloads mp3 files off the internet. There’s not a whole lot of secret sauce there. There are dozens of other apps that you can use if Pocket Casts doesn’t suit you any longer.

That’s what it does now, yes, because it’s a good citizen in the open standards podcasting ecosystem. I hope it remains so.

As for other apps, I haven’t found anything that suits me as well. PC has a decent UI, is user (as opposed to publisher/advertiser) focused, and syncs between all my devices. It’s a truly great indie app. Rarely are such things improved by acquisition.

> They only get about 20% of their funding from the government

This statement by defenders of NPR always cracks me up. "Only" 20%? Why, that's "only" $445 million, or a mere "$1.35 per citizen," as the President and CEO of PBS put it recently. (Per citizen, not per taxpayer.)

So, what percentage of the funding for NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, and Fox comes from the government? Or, what service does PBS provide that the others don't?

Oh wait, that's right, they're "neutral." That one only makes me laugh harder.

NPR had $208 million in revenue in 2016. Even if you assume that 100% of funds from member stations and universities were really from the government, less than $67 million of their funding came from the government. The actual estimates are that around 11%, or around $22 million comes from the government.

I have no clue where you get the idea that NPR has a budget over over 2 billion per year, but you are way off.

Oops, the $435 million figure is for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, my mistake. My point is that government should have no role in producing or broadcasting what purports to be news. Journalism was called "the Fourth Estate" for a reason, but has lost any credible claim to that title during my lifetime. Public funding for "news" is always a bad idea, and in the U.S. has created an interlocking group of companies (CPB, NPR, public tv, et al.) that are incapable of publishing anything that doesn't align with one party in particular.

Australian here, government 100% funds the ABC and the reporting produced is better than the commercial networks of 7, 9 and 10.

It also funds most of the SBS, a foreign language service meant to foster multiculturalism and introduce foreign cinema and television to those who wouldn't normally have easy access to it. And they do a lot of English language subtitles for smaller foreign releases.

Well, they are not neutral in many cases. But, they are not always presenting political shows. Also, do you think ABC, CBS, CNN, or Fox are more factual? Clearly, none of them are neutral. Neutrality is impossible but fact-based reporting is possible. I accept that they cannot be neutral but still support.

You could even say it might be the perfect ownership. Though I didn't believe it at first, podcasts have taken hold & don't look like they are going away any time soon, and you might even argue they are the future of public broadcasting & public radio...

I like the tone. It comes across as a normal guy who is excited about his product extolling the virtues of what was probably a very hard decision.

I use pocketcasts daily and share your unease at anything changing. But. It looks like things may stay broadly the same so maybe we have nothing to worry about?

It seemed to me a bit dismissive of user concerns they clearly anticipated. I've always enjoyed ShiftyJelly's release notes in the past though, so maybe they're just being their usual selves. Either way, only time will tell.

There's also Russell discussing it on the Material Podcast (https://www.relay.fm/material/149). That gives me hope (but it is a shame to hear he won't be on the podcast as often).

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