Apple removes popular gay dating apps from China’s App Store

Apple has removed major Chinese gay dating apps Blued and Finka from the country’s App Store, CABLE reported.

Apple received a government order to remove the apps. “We respect the laws of the countries in which we operate. Based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China, we have removed these two apps from the China storefront only,” an Apple spokesperson said. CABLE in an email. “Earlier this year, developer Finka chose to remove the app from storefronts outside of China, and Blued was only available in China.”

Blued and Finka, which are owned by the same parent company, BlueCity, have also reportedly been removed from several Android stores. Users who have already downloaded the apps can still use them, depending on CABLE.

Blued was launched in 2012 and had 60 million registered users worldwide as of 2021. It was a location-based dating and live streaming service for gay and bisexual men, Rest of the world reported that year, and was originally a Chinese-language copy of the American gay dating app Jack’d. Finka, meanwhile, is a social network aimed at young gay and bisexual men, and BlueCity acquired it in 2020. Blued is branded HeeSay internationally.

It’s part of the Chinese government’s growing crackdown on LGBTQ content and advocacy groups in recent years. As public acceptance of LGBTQ people has increased in China, according to Human Rights Watch, government repression and censorship have increased. Same-sex marriage is not legal in China.

Grindr is already delisted from the Chinese App Store, meaning it is not searchable there. According to 2021 Rest of the world In this article, the reason BlueCity was able to work in China was at least partly because it offered sexual health services such as HIV testing. But in 2022, founder Ma Baoli resigned as CEO and hinted at how difficult it was to operate an LGBTQ business in China.