It's rare that podcast-consumers will leave negative reviews. Sometimes, they get malicious and abusive in their reviews, and such reviews may qualify for removal.
If you're the victim of abuse through your podcast reviews, here's what you can do to request it be evaluated for possible removal.
(Please note this does not apply for reviews you simply don't like or disagree with. You should use this only for reviews with hate, abuse, bullying, and such.)
“Report a concern” for abusive reviews on Apple Podcasts
iTunes had an easy way to report a concern for any review, but that feature is currently absent from Apple Podcasts. Now, the best way to report a review is to contact the Apple Podcasts team.
- Get the review's date and author name from the review in your account on Podgagement.
- Visit the Podcasts Connect contact page.
- Enter your name and email address (it's best if it's the email address in your podcast feed or that you used to submit your podcast to Apple).
- Ensure “Customer Review Removal Request” is selected under “Topic.”
- Enter your podcast title and Apple Podcasts ID number.
- Enter the country or region of the store in which the review exists (Podgagement lets you see all of them).
- Enter the date of the review in “Date and Time Issue Last Occurred.”
- Enter the reviewer's name in “Customer Name.”
- Explain your reason for requesting the review's removal.
- You may include a screenshot of the review or the shareable URL from Podgagement.
“Report issues” for comments on Castbox
Castbox allows you to report comments for unwanted commercial content or spam, pornography or sexually explicit material, hate speech or graphic violence, and harassment or bullying.
- Browse to the offending comment.
- Press the three vertical dots menu.
- Press “Report issues.”
- Select the relevant reason for the report.
- Press “Report Issues.”
Request removal of abusive reviews from Podchaser
Keep it clean
Podchaser does not allow, and this Site may not be used for, any content which may be deemed to be pornography, defamatory, libelous, obscene, harassing, threatening, incendiary, abusive, racist, offensive, deceptive or fraudulent, encouraging criminal or harmful conduct, or which otherwise violates the rights of Podchaser or any third party (including any intellectual property rights, privacy rights, contractual or fiduciary rights), or otherwise shows any person, entity or brand in a bad or disparaging light, without their prior explicit approval; if this describes your audios, videos, photos (even if they are content of yourself), don’t post them on Podchaser.com.
Podchaser's Terms of Service, retrieved on March 18, 2020
If the review in question violates the Podchaser Terms of Service (quoted above), follow these steps to request its removal.
- Copy the review URL either from clicking the Reply link in your Podgagement account, or by finding the review on Podchaser.com.
- Send an email to [email protected] with the review URL and your explanation for requesting the review's removal.
