Dragonfly FM, once China’s ‘podcast king’, pulled from app stores with 66 other apps for data abuse and pop-ups

A Chinese ministry ordered app stores to remove one of the country’s biggest audio content platforms backed by Xiaomi and Baidu. Another 210 apps were warned about their data practices as China prepares to enforce new laws protecting data security and personal information. — SCMP

Dragonfly FM, one of China’s biggest podcast platforms with 130 million monthly active users, was one of 66 apps recently removed from app stores at the behest of regulators.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said in a statement on Wednesday that the apps failed to fix issues such as asking users for too many device permissions and harassing them with pop-up notifications, even after being warned to amend such behaviour.