Kowtowing once again to the Government of the People’s Republic of China, tech giant Apple is reported to be blocking its news app in the Middle Kingdom.
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However, the country’s strict censorship policies have long kept its users at bay from accessing the range of U.S. based websites and Apple is not the only affected tech company; facing challenges amidst the country’s recently upgraded Internet filtering to limit its users ability to share and access content on sensitive issues. Users in the US who have it installed and registered the app on their iPhone, iPad or iPad touch are supposed to be able to have access to its content regardless of what region they are in.
Reddit user Larry Salibra noticed that the News app, which is linked to his US Apple account, was blocked when traveling to mainland China, though it still worked while in Hong Kong. When a user opens the Apple News app in China, the top of the app which would normally display the latest news, simply shows a message reading “Can’t refresh right now”.
Apple’s impressive rise in China isn’t coming without a few sacrifice, as visitors are discovering that the Apple News app doesn’t work on the country’s networks.
Apple does have the option of censoring the app in China, as many local app makers and providers already do, however doing so would involve the company establishing its own censorship team presumably within China itself, something Apple is not now prepared to do.
While Apple’s news app is only available for download in the USA, it can still be accessed when travelling to other countries.
Reports suggest that the app is shut down when the device is used with Chinese carrier regardless of whether or not location services are enabled on the device.
However, Apple has not yet released any comment on the Apple News censoring. Apple made this available to United States customers in June, and they are now being tested in Australia and Britain. Instead of playing by the Chinese government’s many rules and carefully selecting which articles are acceptable to view in China, Apple has essentially chosen to fight fire with fire, i.e. selective censorship with… well… blanket censorship.
In China companies are responsible for censoring their content to ensure they are in keeping with Beijing’s rules but Apple appears to have attempted to avoid the problem completely by disabling the service.
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The timing of this realization strangely coincides with a news article about China’s super rich offspring, the fuerdai, which was written by Bloomberg and displayed prominently inside the app inside the United States market.
