Apple said it complied with orders from the Chinese government to remove the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China. Apple also removed Telegram and Signal from China.
The New York Times similarly wrote that “a person briefed on the situation said the Chinese government had found content on WhatsApp and Threads about China’s president, Xi Jinping, that was inflammatory and violated the country’s cybersecurity laws. The specifics of what was in the content was unclear, the person said.”
“These apps and many foreign apps are normally blocked on Chinese networks by the ‘Great Firewall’—the country’s extensive cybersystem of censorship—and can only be used with a virtual private network or other proxy tools,” Reuters wrote.
“For years, Apple has bowed to Beijing’s demands that it block an array of apps, including newspapers, VPNs, and encrypted messaging services,” The New York Times noted yesterday.
A lot of folks seem to be recommending sideloading on Android as a workaround. But remember, the great firewall even makes that difficult in China.
Direct downloading APKs can be hard when direct download sites are blocked by ISPs, local VPNs are state regulated and monitored, western alternatives get blocked and finding them is obscured in Baidu, etc.
Sideloading on Android -is- easier than iOS, but China still throws up a LOT of roadblocks when they decide to censor something.
A lot of the internet freedom and flexibility that exists in the west does not exist in China. It’s not always as easy as paying for a VPN and visiting Signal.com/android/apk/
The thing is if doing this can get you into legal troubles?
From what I have seen, VPNs are still not uncommon in China despite it all, have seen a few Chinese users in our IRC too. What matters is that opportunity exists after you’ve put in the necessary effort, rather than what happens on Apple devices.
VPNs are common, but local Chinese VPNs are regulated and monitored by the state.