Apple has removed WhatsApp, an end-to-end encrypted messaging app owned by Meta, from China's App Store following a government order citing national security concerns, news agency Reuters reported on Friday. Ta.
Meta's new Twitter-like text-based social networking app, Threads, was also removed from the App Store for the same reason.
“The Cyberspace Administration of China has ordered the removal of these apps from Chinese store shelves based on national security concerns,” Apple said in a statement to the news agency.
Meta confirmed to TechCrunch that two of its apps are no longer available on Apple's App Store in China, but did not provide details about the removals. “He will contact Apple for comment,” a Meta spokesperson told us.
We also reached out to Apple with questions about the removal, but the iPhone maker had not responded as of press time.
Two other messaging apps, namely Signal and Telegram, were also removed from Apple's App Store in China, Reuters reported. This element of the report cites data from app tracking companies Qimai and AppMagic.
Apple has not confirmed these two additional deletions. However, the AppleCensorship site, which tracks App Store removals, records that both Signal and Telegram have “disappeared” from Apple's mainland China App Store.
We contacted Telegram about the status of the iOS app, but did not receive a response as of press time.
Asked about the Reuters report, Signal president Meredith Whittaker told TechCrunch that Signal is already blocked by the Great Firewall in China.
“You may have been able to download Signal before, but Signal registration and messages are obviously blocked,” she said, adding that even though the app no longer appears in the App Store, users accessing it from China still have access to it. He suggested that there was little point in accessing it. Register or send a message.
However, it appears that Signal is not always blocked in this way. Back in 2021, TechCrunch's Rita Liao reported that Signal was fully functional in China, including without a VPN. But state censors have likely cracked down even further on end-to-end encrypted messaging apps since then.
previous deletion
This isn't the first time Apple has removed an app following instructions from China's internet regulator. Last summer, just before Chinese regulations targeting generative AI went into effect, several generative AI apps were removed from Apple's China App Store.
Last year, another Twitter alternative, Jack Dorsey-backed Damus, was also removed from Apple's China App Store shortly after approval.
A few years ago, audio social networking app Clubhouse was also pulled from the Apple Store in China shortly after its global release. In recent years, Apple has also removed the popular censorship circumvention tool (and previously his VPN app). RSS app. Podcast app. There are even Quran apps, to name a few others.
It's unclear why WhatsApp and Threads are currently being removed from Apple's China App Store.
One is an end-to-end encrypted (E2EE) messaging app, and the other is a microblogging-style social media app. (Telegram has both private messaging and one-to-many broadcast-style features, but its own (non-default) E2EE is only available for so-called “secret chats.”) Signal, on the other hand, We offer the industry's gold standard E2EE across all aspects.
The thread was launched in early July last year. The app itself is blocked by China's Great Firewall, so Chinese users who want to download the app will need to use a VPN to circumvent censorship. Although it seems like quite a few were able to do so, as Threads quickly broke into the top five on Apple's China App Store last summer.
Popular apps are likely to attract the attention of China's state censors, who could prompt Apple to take further steps to crack down on usage, such as ordering it to remove the software from its store.
At the same time, other popular meta-owned apps, Facebook and Instagram, are still available in Apple's China App Store, according to AppleCensorship. However, as TC's Liao pointed out in a 2021 post about the increased usage of Signal and Telegram, “China's censorship decisions can be arbitrary and inconsistent.”