Apple has decided to disable its News app in China, according to a source familiar with the matter and reported by the New York Times.
The decision to block Apple News in China is the latest example of the difficulties faced by foreign companies in managing the tight regulations that govern online expression and media in the Asian country.
Once in China, users that open the Apple News app will see an error message of the app not being supported in the current region, as opposed to seeing the usual list of news articles displayed based on the user's preferences.
Apple announced the Apple News app back in June. While the service is currently only available in the United States and being tested in Australia and Britain, users that have access to the app are able to read content even as they go overseas. However, that does not seem to be the case when users travel to China.
Apple, which declined to issue a comment on the matter, has China as its second biggest revenue source after the United States, with sales of over $13 billion for the third quarter. This could be why the company is taking a very conservative approach in delivering new content, such as what can be seen in the Apple News app, within the country.
The Chinese government requires companies operating in the country to censor the content being released in China. For Apple, that would mean that it would have to create its own censorship system to weed out certain articles from feeds. Most Chinese businesses are using a combination of manpower and automated software to carry out such a task.
Apple is likely blocking access to the News app in China to avoid potential problems altogether, such as possible regulatory sanctions by the government in case content that should not have been allowed to go through reaches users in the country.
Larry Salibra, a Hong Kong entrepreneur, posted on his blog his discovery that the blocking of the Apple News app was not done through location tracking and geofencing, but is rather based on the mobile network that the Apple device is connected to.
"What worries me, is that the mechanism Apple uses to disable the News app and Apple Maps uses the location of the user to change the behavior of their device without their permission, even if the location service is disabled in the privacy settings," Salibra wrote.
Salibra added that the "China Kill Switch" on the Apple News app, which is also applicable to Apple Maps wherein only government-approved apps are displayed, could even possibly be expanded by the Chinese government to other apps and services on Apple devices.
