Apple removes applications used to share coronavirus information in China

Apple has removed apps from its China app store in the past for containing ”illegal content.” Apple has cooperated with the Chinese government on multiple occasions to takedown apps as requested. The quest to remove VPNs has been taken into serious procedures. Software used to track police activity related to Hong Kong protests, a virus-related game, and apps on various other topics. This is much of the chaos that is happening within Apple’s territory. The company has a public stance that privacy is a human right and its promises to protect user privacy through strong on-device encryption. This is not obvious is not an obsession now. It has been widely criticized for bowing to Chinese pressure to enable government surveillance and storage of user data — a decision that has enabled it to continue manufacturing and selling devices within the country.

The COVID-19 pandemic continues to worsen and spread elsewhere in the world. On the positive side of life, reports from initially afflicted China have improved seemingly thanks to a coordinated medical response. But this is possible because of a government censorship campaign. Once again, and gratefully again, Apple finds itself in the middle of a Chinese censorship controversy, this time for pulling app citizens were using to share coronavirus news within the country.

Although this is still available outside of China, Huiyu wang has an application called

Boom. This is a text encryption keyboard app specifically designed to encrypt text messages, chats, and articles where you can decrypt received texts. It employs tricks such as emoji replacement and word jumbles that people can understand despite errors. Users discovered that Boom enabled content to avoid Chinese government filters that screen data for specific keywords as it passes through the network, thus preventing the free flow of information about COVID-19.

Boom arrived in the iOS App Store on February 15, as COVID-19 infections raged in mainland China, but it was pulled from distribution in the country this week, Wang said in a tweet, with Apple explaining in an email that it included “content that is illegal in China.” Wang told Quartz that the app likely attracted government attention when it was used to share a COVID-19-related interview Chinese censors were attempting to delete from the internet. The New York-based Chinese developer multiple social media accounts have been removed, as well as an unrelated wallpaper app he developed, seemingly as a punitive measure.