Apple has removed several widely used communications platforms from its app store in China at the request of the Chinese government.

Apple has complied with the Chinese government’s request to remove several popular communication apps from its app store, including WhatsApp, Threads, Signal, and Telegram, due to national security concerns. This action was taken following a directive from the Cyberspace Administration of China. These apps have been crucial for political dissidents globally, especially in China where political expression is heavily regulated. Despite previous reliance on VPNs to access these platforms, they are now unavailable for download in China through the official app store. This move by Apple comes amidst increasing tensions between the U.S. and China in the realm of consumer technology, with discussions in the U.S. Senate about the future of TikTok, a popular social media app owned by a Chinese parent company

  • @[email protected]English
    8•2 months ago

    Honestly, this is kind of a relief. When India banned encrypted messaging apps except signal that was very suspicious.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•2 months ago

      So Telegram being banned makes you less suspicious of that?

      How can one be so gullible.

      EDIT: Also a nation-state can get a backdoor to your device or a trojan, in case you are using something secure from them.

      • @[email protected]English
        2•2 months ago

        In this context signal getting banned gives more credibility to signal, but it should be noted signal wasn’t banned in India even though briar was.

        I’m not sure what your threat model is, I don’t see how I’m being gullible. Looking at who bans what is a signal that we should incorporate into our threat modeling

    • @[email protected]English
      10•2 months ago

      The people of China should lose encrypted communication because you are losing your minute long videos of fortnite dances?

        • Praise IdlenessEnglish
          3•2 months ago

          How is it that you don’t know that open source projects exist and yet on Lemmy?

          Lemmy is literally free, as in beer and as in freedom, latter which I don’t think you’ll ever appreciate.

            • Praise IdlenessEnglish
              2•2 months ago

              I’m not talking about free services. I’m talking about open services that people can (almost) ultimately trust. We know that Signal can’t do anything about private messages because we know for sure they are encrypted. There are opensource clients too. Aside from having to give them your phone number, the fact that they can’t read any of the strings/media you send through it, is not going to change whether if the server is selfhosted or ran by Meta or Google.

              Are you also concerned about MS stealing your data even if a computer has never been connected to the Internet and never will?