China’s Gay Dating Apps Vanish From App Stores Overnight
As Apple complies with new censorship orders, China’s queer community faces yet another erasure from its digital landscape.
Featured image by NOEL CELIS/AFP via Getty Images
Two of China’s most popular gay dating apps, Blued and Finka, have disappeared from the country’s app stores, in what advocates and users are calling the latest blow to a shrinking digital safe space for queer people.
Apple confirmed that the removals came “based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China,” the country’s main internet regulator. “We follow the laws in the countries where we operate,” a company spokesperson told Wired in an email. “Based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China, we have removed these two apps from the China storefront only.”
No official announcement accompanied the directive. For Chinese users, the apps simply vanished overnight. While existing downloads still function for now, new users in mainland China can no longer find or install them.
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Blued, with roughly 56 million users, and Finka, with 2.7 million, are not merely dating/hookup platforms. For many queer people across China, particularly in smaller cities where physical LGBTQ spaces are rare, they serve as valuable community hubs.
“I met most of my friends there,” one user, surnamed Zhao, told CNN. “Especially in the less cosmopolitan parts of the country where places for gay people to gather are almost non-existent.”
The Cyberspace Administration of China, or CAC, has spent the past decade expanding its power over the country’s online life. Once focused on data and privacy compliance, the agency now enforces ideological and cultural boundaries that increasingly target LGBTQ content.
The removal of Blued and Finka follows similar takedowns in recent years. Grindr was banned from Apple’s Chinese App Store in 2022 after regulators cited its “difficulty complying” with privacy laws. Apple also removed WhatsApp and Threads earlier this year, after officials cited national security concerns.
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Since 2023, all apps operating in China have been required to register with the government and obtain a license, part of a system designed to bring every piece of digital content under state supervision. The CAC’s growing mandate allows it to shape not just what people see, but what kinds of communities can exist online.
In this case, state media has suggested the gay dating platforms were removed over “compliance issues” and “vulgar content,” vague terms that often accompany crackdowns on social and political expression.
Blued, launched in 2012, built one of the largest queer digital communities in Asia. Its younger competitor, Finka, attracted Gen Z users through livestreaming and community events. Both are owned by BlueCity, a company once hailed as a symbol of China’s growing queer entrepreneurship.
“The government can’t stop people from being gay,” a former Blued user told Wired. “But it can make us feel like we have nowhere left to exist.”
