The creators of the podcast “Hello, you are a foreign agent,” journalists Sonya Groysman and Olya Churakova, received a letter from Apple Podcasts demanding that they remove the project from the platform because of a letter from Roskomnadzor. The authors spoke about this on their social networks.
“We received a letter from Apple Podcasts: Roskomnadzor demands to remove them “Hello, you are a foreign agent” “We allegedly distribute information materials with our podcast aimed at destabilizing the socio-political situation in Russia,” the publication says.
The platform, in turn, obliged the authors to delete their own podcast within 24 hours of receiving the letter , deadline is the evening of January 26. Groysman and Churakova decided not to follow the instructions of Apple Podcasts. At the time of publication of the news, all seasons of “Hello, You’re a Foreign Agent” are available for listening through the service.
The creators of the project added: “These demands are nothing more than an act of military censorship, and we really hope that the platform will not participate in this.” In their opinion, the reason for Roskomnadzor’s attention to the podcast was the latest season called “Sisters,” which tells about the families of Russians who went to fight against Ukraine.
Previously, “Hello, you are a foreign agent,” at the request of the regulator, removed the service «Yandex Music». One of the reasons for this in the letter from Roskomnadzor was that the podcast contains “unreliable socially significant information disseminated under the guise of reliable messages.”
“I’m a goner.” Conversation between a Wagner PMC fighter and his sister in the podcast “Hello, you are a foreign agent.”
The Apple Podcasts service has already deleted projects of Russian independent media — “Medusa” and “Kholoda.” The podcasts “What Happened” and “Cold” disappeared from the site in early August. Before the deletion, the American company reported that Roskomnadzor notified it of a “violation of the procedure for disseminating information” and demanded that the podcasts be removed. Later, both podcasts were restored to Apple Podcasts.
In January, it became known that Apple paid a fine of 1.178 billion rubles for “imposing” its payment instrument. As noted by the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), the money has already entered the Russian budget. The reason for the fine was the prohibition for iOS developers to inform their customers that they can pay for purchases outside the AppStore.