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.
True. That stuff can hamper curb peer to peer distribution, which Chinese citizens have been know to do, since it can bypass ISPs.
That said, if you’re pirating stuff in China and fucking with VPNs already, you’re probably tech literate enough to side load an IPA. It’s not too hard to do without jailbreaking these days.