More something like, “don’t call it a Blu-ray movie if you can’t play it on a Blu-ray player”. Feel free to call it a “show” or whatever, but if you can’t play it in a podcast player, how is it meaningfully a podcast?

Edit: Probably a much better movie analogy would be “Don’t say you’re shooting film if you‘re using a digital camera”.

I read parent’s “only” not as if to say “it’s not as good quality because it could only manage to be on Spotify” but rather that it’s inaccessible to anyone not using Spotify ie it’s exclusively on that platform.

I think OP's point is more like calling whatsapp an SMS because the user experience is similar. Because the underlying technology stack is meaningfully different, and that difference matters.

Yeah, yeah, and criminals breaking into computers are crackers, not hackers. Some ships have sailed decades ago.

No, a proper podcast is available as RSS feed and compatible with any Podcast player.

It's the last actually open and compatible part of the web that hasn't been split apart and sealed off by corporate interests, so we should fight to keep it that way.