Is Threads censored by Apple?

Why it is unavailable

1. Apple said publicly · 2024-04-19

   Named in the same public Apple statement as WhatsApp: the Cyberspace Administration of China ordered both removed from the China storefront on national security grounds.

   Source:Reuters: Apple removes WhatsApp and Threads from China App Store on Beijing's ordersApplies to mainland China.

Five things can put an app out of one App Store. Each is weighed below against what can be seen from outside — open a card for the reasoning.

• A government or a court demanded itOn the record

  and Apple complied. Apple publishes a count of these per country each year and never says which apps they were. Apple's 2025 App Store Transparency Report

  • 35% of Social and messaging apps are unavailable in Afghanistan — 203 of 578 — against 27% of everything we test there.
  • 8 other apps left mainland China the same day, Apr 19, 2024.
  • Apple reports 196 government-ordered removals in mainland China for 2025, naming none of them.
  • Missing from 2 of 175 storefronts, available in 173.
  • A cited source says so — above.
• Apple applied a rule, unaskedPossible

  either its own review guidelines, or its own reading of a local law, with nobody having demanded anything. This is the largest category in Apple's own removal figures by a wide margin, and it covers distribution permits as well as content — Apple kept a free Bible app out of mainland China in 2021 for want of one. Apple's 2025 App Store Transparency Report

  • 35% of Social and messaging apps are unavailable in Afghanistan — 203 of 578 — against 27% of everything we test there.
  • 8 other apps left mainland China the same day, Apr 19, 2024.
  • Missing from 2 of 175 storefronts, available in 173.
  • A different cause is cited above.
• The developer withheld itUnlikely

  freely, or under legal advice of their own, or because Apple's guidelines require that kind of app to be limited to certain countries. Switching a country off is easy for a developer to do in Apple's own tools: it needs no new version of the app, and it leaves no public trace other than the app being unavailable.

  • 35% of Social and messaging apps are unavailable in Afghanistan — 203 of 578 — against 27% of everything we test there.
  • 8 other apps left mainland China the same day, Apr 19, 2024.
  • Missing from 2 of 175 storefronts, available in 173.
  • A different cause is cited above.
• Something brokeUnlikely

  a rejected update, a lapsed certificate, a payment or licensing problem, a mistake nobody has got round to noticing.

  • 35% of Social and messaging apps are unavailable in Afghanistan — 203 of 578 — against 27% of everything we test there.
  • 8 other apps left mainland China the same day, Apr 19, 2024.
  • Gone for 3 years.
  • A different cause is cited above.
• A local rule about paying for itRuled out

  gambling licences, financial rules, tax — the kind of law that governs a transaction. Apple can obey every one of them by refusing the payment, which is why this is the only restriction we would accept and the only one that cannot touch a free app.

  • It is free, so Apple sells nothing here.

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