Amazon’s audiobook service Audible and Phone apps for reading the holy books of Islam and Christianity have disappeared from Apple Stores in mainland China, the latest examples of the impact of the country’s stringent regulations on Internet firms. Audible on Friday said it had removed its app from the Apple Store in mainland China last month “due to permit requirements”.
Makers of apps for reading and listening to the Quran and Bible say that their apps have also been removed from Apple’s China-based store at the request of the government. Apple did not return a request for comment on Friday. A spokesman for China’s embassy in the US declined to speak about the removal of the specific app, but said the Chinese government “has always encouraged and supported the development of the Internet.”
“At the same time, the development of the Internet in China must also comply with Chinese laws and regulations,” Liu Pengyu said in an emailed statement. China’s government has long sought to control the flow of information online, but is increasingly taking its toll on the Internet sector in other ways, making it harder to determine the reasons for the removal of a particular app. Is. This year Chinese regulators have sought to strengthen data privacy restrictions and limit the amount of time children play video games. They are also exerting more control over the algorithms used by tech firms to personalize and recommend content.
Popular American language-learning app Duolingo disappeared from Apple’s China Store over the summer, as have many video game apps. What appears to link Audible to religious apps is that everyone was recently informed of permit requirements for published content. Pakistan Data Management Services, which makes the Quran Majeed app, said it is awaiting further information from the Internet Authority of China on how it can be restored. The Karachi-based company said the app has about 1 million users in China and about 40 million worldwide. Hassan Shafiq Ahmed, the company’s head of growth and relations, said those who had already downloaded the app can still use it.
“We are trying to find out what documents are required to obtain approval from the Chinese authorities so that the app can be restored,” he said in an email.
The maker of a Bible app said it has removed it from the Apple Store in China after learning from Apple’s App Store review process that it required special permission to distribute an app with “book or magazine content.” Washington said it is now reviewing requirements to obtain the necessary permits “with the hope that we can reinstall our app in the App Store in China and continue to distribute the Bible around the world.” The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned Apple’s actions, saying the company was enabling religious persecution of China’s Muslims and others.
“This decision must be reversed. If American corporations do not raise the backbone and stand up to China now, they will be able to spend the next century on their own,” said a statement from CAIR’s national deputy director Edward Ahmed Mitchell. A fascist superpower.” The removals were first detected this week by watchdog website AppleCensorship, which monitors Apple’s App Store to track when apps have been blocked, especially under authoritarian governments in China and other countries. with.
This week, Microsoft said it would shut down its main LinkedIn service in China later this year, “citing a more challenging operating environment in China and greater compliance requirements.” Unlike LinkedIn, which has been offering an exclusive Chinese service since 2014, Amazon-owned Audible said it doesn’t have a dedicated service for customers in China.
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