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

Apple has removed top Chinese gay dating apps Blued and Finka from the country's App Store, WIRED has reported.

Apple received a government order to remove the apps. "We follow the laws in the countries where 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 told WIRED in an email. "Earlier this year, the developer of Finka elected to remove the app from storefronts outside of China, and Blued was available only 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, according to WIRED.

Blued launched in 2012 and had 60 million registered users worldwide as of 2021. It was a location-based dating and livestreaming service for gay and bisexual men, Rest of 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 for younger gay and bisexual men, and BlueCity acquired it in 2020. Blued is branded as HeeSay internationally.

This is part of the Chinese government's increasing crackdown on LGBTQ content and advocacy groups in recent years. While public acceptance of LGBTQ people has grown in China, according to Human Rights Watch, there's increased government repression and censorship. Same-sex marriage isn't legal in China.

Grindr is already delisted in China's App Store, meaning that it's unsearchable there. According to the 2021 Rest of World article, the reason that BlueCity was able to function in China was at least in part because it offered sexual health services such as HIV testing. But in 2022, founder Ma Baoli stepped down as CEO and hinted at how difficult it was to operate an LGBTQ business in China.