Most of you probably know that Apple kicked Alex Jones from the iTunes podcast platform despite it being one of the most popular podcasts.
I clicked on a link on the Infowars podcast to subscribe to see what happens (using an old iPad with a dying battery that is not being replaced). It wanted to reinstall Apple News and Podcasts, both of which I deleted following the Alex Jones action.
Since his podcast is still gone, I was motivated to submit a rating for both apps, only to find out that both apps are no longer allowing reviews. It appears that Apple is prepared to kill its entire podcast platform rather than counter the Alex Jones audience, who I guess Apple believes are just Russian trolls employed by Putin.
On the Infowars web site, they have a button that points to a conventional RSS feed. Interestingly the audio files are still being stored on Apple’s servers and downloaded from there . Apple is just blocking your ability to find them.
http://xml.nfowars.net/Alex.rss
If you click on an RSS feed, it may or may not do anything, depending on whether your computer (or mobile device) has an RSS player app or program.
Looking over the RSS players, most of them rely on third parties to curate and organize available podcasts, meaning the player will also be subject to pressure to limit what you are allowed to listen to.
A few RSS readers still will allow you to enter a raw RSS URL that isn’t found in a search engine, bypassing the censorship. One that worked easily on Android is called Podcast Go
It might be possible to create an RSS parser on a web page so that no RSS software is required at all. First, I will see if someone built this before reinventing the wheel.
GCN is offering its own Hour by hour feed so you don’t have to wait until the end of the fourth hour to hear the first hour
http://rss.gcnlive.com/alexJones/feed.xml