Gay dating app Grindr pulled from Apple App Store in China

Days after The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) vowed to renew its campaign to police online content, a popular gay dating app, Grindr, has been removed from Apple App Store in China.

Bloomberg News:

The U.S.-owned app was taken off the iOS store last week, while searches for the matchmaking platform on Android produce no results on app markets run by domestic giants like Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Huawei Technologies Co. Alphabet Inc.’s Play Store, like other Google services, is unavailable in China.
It’s unclear when Grindr disappeared from Chinese Android stores, while mobile research firm Qimai recorded that its iOS version was removed on Jan. 27.
Grindr’s removal comes as China kicks off fresh efforts to regulate internet content ahead of the Beijing Winter Olympics.
Last year, a slew of foreign internet services — including Yahoo, Microsoft Corp.’s LinkedIn and Epic Games Inc.’s Fortnite -– gave up on China, citing an increasingly challenging business and legal environment. China removed homosexuality from a national list of mental disorders about two decades ago, but Beijing censors have sporadically clamped down on entertainment and content with gay themes.

MacDailyNews Take: According to 9to5Mac‘s Chance Miller, it was Grindr itself who removed the app from the App Store in China, not Apple.
Please help support MacDailyNews. Click or tap here to support our independent tech blog. Thank you!
Shop The Apple Store at Amazon.

The post Gay dating app Grindr pulled from Apple App Store in China appeared first on MacDailyNews.