Blued and Finka were removed from Apple’s App Store.
LGBTQ+ rights and acceptance have taken another hit in China, with Apple removing two of the countries biggest LGBTQ+ dating apps. Wired reports that Blued and Finka are no longer available on the iOS App Store or certain Android App Stores following orders from the Cyberspace Administration of China, the country’s internet regulator and censor.
Apple told Wired that it must “follow the laws in the countries where we operate.” Both dating apps were available solely in China, where LGBTQ+ dating apps are minimal — Grindr, for instance, hasn’t been available on Apple since 2022. Blued exists internationally under the name HeeSay.
China has increasingly cracked down on LGBTQ+ individuals’ rights and groups in recent years, allegedly shuttering large organizations like the Beijing LGBT Center in 2023. For reasons unknown, Blued previously stopped new registrations this past July, with individuals buying second-hand accounts to use the app. However, it reopened in the middle of August.
Ok so… make an app for finding “friends” and leave it up to users to discuss whether they want to slob knobs or paint miniatures or whatever
And just when Apple updated their logo to be a raindbow
I still think of it looking like it did the first time I encountered it.
What the hell are the GOP gonna use to find the all male orgies when the my visit their handlers in china?
Look out, the tankies will swarm to deny that this problem exists.
pink washing is a thing and the americans are the at it.
One of them already downvoted you. I’m sure that more of them are coming.
that’s generally one of the bad things about china.
And Apple, if they comply.
apple goes without saying. fuck google too for good measure.
China has increasingly cracked down on LGBTQ+ individuals’ rights and groups in recent years
Yeah, it has a conservative streak disguised as post-Deng communism where the only freedom there is to make money and rip off another fellow citizen, anywhere from dating scams and pig butchering to tofu-dreg products.
Part of the problem with “China Bad” articles is that they tend to report “Thing Happened” without diving into the “Here’s Why”. If you get past the Engadget article that’s just a four paragraph click-through/reprint of the Wired article and read the original piece, there’s at least a bit more meat on the bone.
https://www.wired.com/story/apple-removes-gay-dating-apps-china-app-store/
In July, Blued abruptly stopped new user registration without giving an explanation, according to Chinese social media posts. For a month, Chinese users who wanted to get on the platform were paying as much as $20 for secondhand Blued accounts on ecommerce websites. But registration resumed in mid-August.
In 2020, BlueCity, the parent company of Blued, went public. It announced that the app had over 49 million registered users and over 6 million monthly active users. The same year, BlueCity said it was acquiring Finka, its main competitor in China, for about $33 million. The company delisted in 2022 and was acquired by Newborn Town, a Hong Kong–listed social media firm. Most of the longtime employees of Blued, including its founder Ma Baoli, left the company after the acquisition, says a former Blued employee who asked not to be named for privacy reasons.
In 2024, Blued rebranded its international version of the app to HeeSay, which became popular among users in India, Pakistan, and the Philippines, according to The Wall Street Journal. HeeSay remains available in app stores.
So the apps merged, then were traded, had the team gutted, and the app pivoted to serving an entirely new audience of users.
Why would this provoke a response from a Chinese regulator? Idk. Would be great to find out further details from the news outlet itself, rather than just getting another “China hates gay people” superficial response.
It doesn’t look like the Cyberspace Administration of China purged all gay dating apps from their behind-the-firewall app store. So it seems premature to conclude this is a new vast pogrom against gay dating. Was Blued/Finka filling up with scams to the point that a regulator stepped in? Was there some kind of personal beef between the new owners and the Chinese regulatory agency? Did a bribe not get paid? Is this actually the beginning of a vast pogrom against all dating apps?
No fucking clue. And nobody doing the reporting seems to be interested in following up and asking.
“Yes, dear leader.” - Timmy Apple
I’d love to give this a simple upvote. What is Tim Cook’s choice here? Operate illegally in China until the government shuts down their entire source of revenue in an entire market which, also, is the one that produces nearly all of its hardware?
If he doesn’t do it - shareholders will remove him in the blink of an eye and replace him with someone who will.
Where I’m agreeing though is - my current phone is my last Apple phone. I’ll be going with Graphene after this. I don’t want corporations telling me what software I can and can’t run on my decides while surveilling me.
What is Tim Cook’s choice here?
I mean, what was the rationale for the regulation? Its not like enshitification of apps is some novel event unique to American-centric businesses. Did Blued/Finka become a cesspool of degenerate AI slop and scam ads like so many other popular social media platforms? Is there any legitimate reason why this company was targeted beyond “China hates gays”?
Did the Apple Executives get handed a serious list of problems with the app and choose to de-platform it rather than try and patch a sinking ship? Or is Cook just a cuck for Chinese Communism?
I don’t want corporations telling me what software I can and can’t run on my decides while surveilling me.
Cheers to that. But if you’re side-loading everything, you’re not really worried about what’s hosted on the Apple Store to begin with. Why is an executive decision to delist an app from a proprietary service a problem?
Any pushback, any moralization, any sort of semblance of a spine.
Not just ‘fuck LGBTQ’.
Don’t you worry, Android is about to get locked down too and the biggest open source app store already said they are going to close up shop. It’s all going to shit.
Better be smart and buy a phone that runs well with PostmarketOS or Ubuntu Touch if you desire freedom.the biggest open source app store already said they are going to close up shop.
What? F-droid isn’t going anywhere afaik.
The trouble with appeasement is that you’re eventually pushed to the point where you won’t cave anymore. You say no. And they punish you for it.
And now, all that appeasement has meant nothing. You sold your soul, you didn’t fight back, you did damage to yourself or your reputation or your customers or whatever. But you’re right where you would have been if you didn’t appease at all.
You have an enemy. If you didn’t, they wouldn’t be making you do terrible things. Do you want to tell them no to their face now? Or after they’ve recruited you into their scheme for years?
It’s sunk cost fallacy as international strategy and it’s terrible.
The trouble with appeasement is that you’re eventually pushed to the point where you won’t cave anymore.
I thought the trouble with appeasement was that you surrendered turf until you were backed out of a defensible position.
You have an enemy.
The Chinese economy is not the enemy of the Apple retail sector. And it never has been. They’ve been hand-in-glove for decades.
It’s sunk cost fallacy as international strategy and it’s terrible.
It’s a profit-maximizing strategy and its how every capitalist enterprise operates.
This is literally the same argument that Elon made in defense of censoring Twitter in Turkey.
I’m sure it is. My point is - what do Lemmy users expect out of a for-profit company operating inside of a capitalistic economic system? Saying “no” to China’s LGBT hating demands is impossible in this situation.
Same, just holding onto my iPhone 11 till the graphene phone comes out
You could probably sell your phone and get an older Pixel for pretty much nothing if you wanted to swap now.
Yeah, and get the garbage standby battery life that every recent Pixel with a Google Tensor SOC has, let alone one with a degraded battery
Fuck Google and all, but don’t dismiss used tech like that. There’s absolute bangers out there going for prices that shouldn’t be reasonable for the value you get out of them with proper software.
Like ThinkPads and Linux, although worse and not entirely semiofficial.
I’m not hating on used hardware for no reason. I’m running an old Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th Gen myself, dual-booting Zorin OS and MacOS.
But it’s no secret that Pixel phones have subpar battery life even when new, and it certainly doesn’t help that Google artificially reduces battery capacity with age
Can’t really say for the older devices, but I have a recent Pixel, and its battery life in my experience has been pretty close to my old (but still newer than OP’s) iPhone. Maybe I just use my phone differently than most people, but I never had amazing battery life with iPhones.
Please please please be a good phone. I feel like that’ll be great. I’d like a Linux phone, but I can’t see that shaping up as a Linux reliable daily driver in the next couple of years.
Buy a inexpensive compatible Pixel Device that can run graphene OS and try it out.
Does China know Tim Cook is gay? Does Tim Cook?
Tim Cook absolutely doesn’t
I’m sure he’s happy to fuck all Apple customers for money if he thinks he can get away with it, which strictly speaking would make him Pansexual.
Is it really pansexual when you fist them, but jerk off?
Yes, but he’s straight for pay.
Currently on a business trip where it’s technically illegal for me to exist. Feeling this comment.
It’s not about being gay. It’s mostly about casual dating/casual sex, which are both a social taboo in China. Most dating apps are basically sex apps, so China bans them. Tinder has been banned for a while. It’s the same for LGBT and other apps.
It probably has something to do with the LGBT movement as well, but I can’t say for sure here.
I think it’s part of the effort to curb the population decrease. It’s not in the culture to pearl clutch about LGBTQ+ people as morally wrong like western cultures.
They are trying anything to influence people to make babies. Stricter pornography rules, shaming women for not making babies, shaming “feminine men”, and that includes banning dating apps that helps indulge in activities that don’t help with making babies. Making queer people less visible is unfortunately part of the strategy.
Though queer media is however not as banned as people think, so far at least.
Well, according to Trump he’s a fruit …
china doesnt care if you have tons of cash, thats why asians love westerners that are wealthy or well off, they want to be them. and thats why alot of tend towards conservatism too(at least the older ones) john xina, DWAYNE johnson, and some white influencers cater to the country.
More importantly does Tim Cook know he’s Ellen DeGeneres?
He can’t hear you over the sound of all the money entering his bank account.
okay, hear me out - sure, the apps need to be removed from the app store
why can’t people just install them separately anyways?
Sort of the unanswered question here. Why was the app removed?
“China hates gays” is just the default western-facing answer. But there’s no coverage of the actual regulatory decision other than that Apple claims to have responded to it. Hell, the article linked on Engadget is just a partial reprint of the original Wired article, which reveals the two apps are owned by the same parent company, which had fired the original development team and pivoted the app’s audience to India and Pakistan.
Folks on here who are fully familiar with the enshitification of American-centric apps seem flabbergasted at the notion that a foreign country with its own regulatory board might censor an app for any reason other than “Hates Gays”.
It took the EU to force Apple to allow sideloading and Apple obviously implemented it horribly.
You’re from Android ecosystem right?
how could you tell?
lol
Ah yes, the socialist utopia.
China is not a socialist utopia. The average Chinese person still has a better quality of life then the average American, because America is a capitalist hellhole.
Love how this simple truth gets downvoted.
FFS, you’ve got American citizens being massed through open windows by masked, unidentified vigilantes, and you still have people who will die on the hill of “China Worse” because foreign countries full of non-white people are evil.
Both are shitholes mate. If gay people don’t have rights, no one does. Let’s not get into a dick measuring contest, because you’re both looking pretty inverted right now.
Yes, if you are part of the mostly culturally homogeneous majority, hold no views that the state has arbitrarily determined are verboten, are not in some way part of the many groups that have been arbitrarily determined to be verboten (such as increasingly LGBT individuals), are fine with a leader who is set to rule for life, are not below a certain age and unable to get a job in the ruthless job market, live in a city rather than a rural village with poor future prospects, are fine with widespread surveillance in said city far beyond most of the West (UK might give them a run for their money here), are male, and so on, I’m sure it’s a lovely place to live.
Using America as the example is just funny. Did I say anything about America being good? America is an utterly dysfunctional state. Ironically, it seems both the Chinese govt and Trump’s admin agree that gay people shouldn’t exist. Pretty sad given that things had been trending in a positive direction for LGBT people maybe 15 years ago in China.
Dude, I agreed with you, it’s not a socialist utopia…
And we seem to agree that America is utterly dysfunctional, and the average American is worse off than the average Chinese.
I’m not sure why you felt the need to describe the average person, I wasn’t defending China… I already agreed it’s not a socialist utopia. It’s a capitalist hellhole with remnants of socialism/communism that keep the average person housed and fed.
But in America today you can get arrested without due process and shipped to another country for being too brown, you can get thrown in jail for speaking against the genocide America is funding, and you don’t even get housing or food or healthcare to show for it, just work until you die so the rich can get richer and you can leave your kids with a mortgage.
The average American is absolutely not worse off than the average Chinese. Though I will agree that the average Chinese is ironically happier than the average American.
Don’t get me wrong - Chinese live okay, even if they’re poor. There’s a strong sense of community, people get cheap and inexpensive goods, and outside of the tier 1 coastal cities, it’s super cheap. The walkability is excellent, and the metro and parks are world class. It’s safer. It’s cleaner. There’s few homeless people, and drug zombies are almost nonexistent.
But: American wages are much higher and the job situation in America is less bleak. Working in America is less brutal in terms of hours and expectations. There’s way less pollution, safety standards are higher. But it’s also a society with zero charity. It’s extremely “worry about yourself and maybe your family too but that’s it”. If you’re disabled, you’re fucked. If you can’t find work after 35 because of ageism, you’re fucked. It’s extremely Darwinian. And, for what it’s worth, it’s still Chinese hopping over the border illegally to live in America, not the other way around…
Given how many tankies are on Lemmy, it was really not obvious at all that you were agreeing with me as opposed to saying “ackshually it’s not a utopia, but it’s working on becoming one and America is shit for xyz reasons so you can’t throw stones at China.”
Well, the second part, yes. I’m responding to the “America good, China bad, ugg ugg” mentality.
I’m responding to the “America good, China bad, ugg ugg” mentality.
I’ve tried also, but any time you criticize the USA or Europe and/or point out something is better in China you instantly get downvoted. There is no nuance whatsoever.
If the horseshoe fits…
You have to acquit
no wait
live there then, im chinese i can tell you dont know want to live under ccp if you are not white and wealthy, promoting thier propaganda.
Well, in a socialist society, the purpose of romantic and sexual relationships is to bring into being the next generation of workers to build socialism, and relationships which don’t do this are bourgeois decadence.
the purpose of romantic and sexual relationships is to bring into being the next generation of workers to build socialism
It’s so funny how you’ve taken some of the Silicon Valley Techbro logic and just inserted “socialism” into the center of it to let us know its bad.
i cant tell if this is mockery or not
That’s the best kind of satire.
When they’re talking about owning the means of production, it’s manufacturing, not reproduction
The same can be said of capitalism with the purpose being to build capital, yet its not illegal to not have kids
yet its not illegal to not have kids
Gotta get back to you on this. Currently being pummeled with billy clubs for having an unsanctioned abortion.
Yet. Look around you at the fascist anti-gay capitalists in the growing western politics.
That’s because Fascism is the natural end state of unfettered Capitalism as monopolies and cartels form naturally under it over time for most things and capital (which in Capitalism is Power) increasingly concentration, thus Corruption in Politics explodes which in turn accelerates monopoly and cartel formation and thus capital concentration in a vicious cycle.
However homophobia is not an inherent problem of Capitalism, it’s an inherent problem of what Capitalism innevitably leads to if it’s not stopped.
(All of this IMHO).
Point taken but I’d argue there’s a useful and significant difference between “capitalism”, “fascism”, “anti-LGBTQ+ rights”, and “(anti-)natalism”, despite overlaps.
In other words, force gay people to have straight marriages. I’m sure those will be functional and healthy relationships that aid the state. Not like that hasn’t resulted in numerous suicides.
To put it simply, this is just ignoring reality and trying to stamp your own superficial views of society over it.
To be fair, socialist countries thus far have been mostly utilitarian when dealing with people.
If 10% of gay people commit suicide but 20% reproduce then the policy is a success. Lifes are just resources that can be spent for the “collective’s” (read: state’s) benefit.
Apple told Wired that it must “follow the laws in the countries where we operate.”
Businesses always lie about supporting queer causes. They only care about the money.
If it was more profitable to be fascist nazis, that’s what they would do.
I mean, it didn’t stop them from disobeying laws in western countries and the EU. They will comply when they know there’s no way to wiggle out of it
As someone else mentioned, if he didn’t cave & risked losing the China market, the board would replace him in a heartbeat with someone who will do whatever it takes to keep the money flowing.
I can only imagine this pains him to do seeing as he’s gay himself.
Remember that above all else, rich people identify as rich. All the divides on gender or sexual/romantical preferences are secondary to the rich yes/no question.
No argument there, but that’s the job. I’m not weeping for him, but at the same time I expect he doesn’t personally like it. Most of us run into situations in our lives where we have to do things we ordinarily wouldn’t - if you haven’t yet, you likely eventually will.
The dude gave a fucking golden statue to Trump. He doesn’t give a shit about other gays, he got his billions and bent the knee. Fuck him and fuck apple.
Sometimes you have to do the distasteful stuff to keep doing the good. If you’ve never been in that position, someday you will.
Obviously you and I have polar opposite definitions of “doing good”.
Same logic applies to the nazis.
