Apple pulls top gay dating apps in China after government order

Apple has been removed Two of China’s most popular gay dating apps have been removed from the App Store after receiving a request from China’s main internet censorship and oversight body, WIRED has learned. The move comes as reports of Blued and Finka disappearing from the iOS App Store and several Android app stores circulated on Chinese social media over the weekend. It appears that the apps still work for users in the country who have already downloaded them.

“We follow the laws in the countries where we operate,” an Apple spokesperson said in an email. “Based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China, we have removed these two apps from the storefront in China only.” Apple explained that the apps had not been available in other countries for some time. “Earlier this year, developer Finka chose to remove the app from storefronts outside of China, and Blued was only available in China.”

Most international dating apps for the LGBTQ+ community are already banned in China. Grindr will be removed from Apple’s Chinese App Store in 2022.

China decriminalized homosexuality in the 1990s, but the government does not recognize same-sex marriage. In recent years, China’s LGBTQ+ community has come under increasing pressure as the Chinese Communist Party tightens its control over civil society and freedom of expression. Several prominent gay rights organizations have been shut down in China, and social media companies are now frequently censoring LGBTQ+ content and accounts.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In July, Blued suddenly stopped signing up new users without providing an explanation, according to Chinese social media posts. For a month, Chinese users who wanted access to the platform were paying up to $20 for used Blued accounts on e-commerce sites. But registration resumed in mid-August.

In 2020, Blued’s parent company, BlueCity, went public. It announced that the application has more than 49 million registered users and more than 6 million monthly active users. In the same year, BlueCity said it acquired Finka, its main competitor in China, for about $33 million. The company was delisted in 2022 and acquired by Newborn Town, a Hong Kong-listed social media company. Most of Blued’s old employees, including its founder Ma Baoli, left the company after the acquisition, says a former Blued employee who requested anonymity for privacy reasons.