The Chinese government made Apple remove two apps – just as US considers the same thing for TikTok.
  • Apple has removed WhatsApp and Threads from its Chinese app store following a government order.
  • WhatsApp has been blocked in China since 2017 and its parent company Meta since 2009.
  • Other Western platforms like Gmail, YouTube, Snap, and Spotify have also been censored in China.

Apple removed WhatsApp and Threads from its app store in China after being told to do so by the Chinese government, according to the Wall Street Journal.

China’s top internet regulator asked Apple to remove the two apps because of national security concerns.

  • DdCno1@kbin.social
    91·
    3 months ago

    For both reasons. The national security concerns are real. Try taking the app apart with some standard tools and you’ll quickly discover that it shares more in common with malware than with any other social media applications.

    Then there’s the rampant misinformation from the Chinese state, the fact that non-Chinese employees of Bytedance do not have any access to any of TikTok’s underlying tech (they’ll fly in technicians from China instead of letting any outsider look at anything), the enormous and very telling difference between TikTok for the world and the Chinese alternative, etc. pp.