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

  • Stillhart@lemm.ee
    53·
    7 months ago

    You know with Android, you can just sideload any app you want. Still not sure why anyone buys Apple products, but hey at least you get different colored chat bubbles!

      • huginn@feddit.it
        24·
        7 months ago

        Aka if you void your warranty and crack your phone OS - something that Apple fights at every turn. If you run your phone in unsafe and unfriendly ways then you can do something Android supports natively by default.

        See! They’re totally the same guys! Buy iPhones 🤡

        • Luvon@beehaw.org
          15·
          7 months ago

          🙄 sideloading alt store at least does not void your warranty.

          Software in general won’t void your hardware warranty. That’s ridiculous.

        • B0rax@feddit.de
          10·
          7 months ago

          Those work on untouched iPhones. But you need to resign the apps every 7 days. (Which can be done automatically via the programs that person mentions)

        • dvdnet62@feddit.nlEnglish
          4·
          7 months ago

          wdym? I use those signing service without jailbreak, no weekly signing and everything works flawlessly like regular smartphone

      • Alex@feddit.ro
        3·
        7 months ago

        trollstore doesn’t work on every device and sigbalous and maplesign are payed.

    • Cătă@libranet.de
      10·
      7 months ago

      @Stillhart yea, you can, but that means trusting the third party providing the apk. Besides that, China also has a big power over the internet. They could outright block the apps from working altogether only by cutting the connection. Especially with Threads and WhatsApp where you cannot choose any proxy within the app.

      In fact, I think they already did it.

      @Sgn