One of the fastest growing Twitter alternatives, Damus, has been pulled from the Chinese App Store just two days after the app was approved by Apple.
The app, which runs on the Jack Dorsey-backed decentralized social networking protocol Nostr, has been banned from China at the request of China’s top internet watchdog because, according to the app’s review notice, it “contains content that is illegal in China.” has been removed from the App Store. received by Damus, share on twitter.
Being decentralized means there is no central authority to decide who can participate or what they can say on the platform. As such, Damu’s approval process was initially difficult. This is because Apple needs their services to have a mechanism to flag offensive content. But Damus finally figured out how he will be listed on Apple’s App Store on February 1st.
The decentralized nature of the app has certainly made it short-lived in China, where information is tightly controlled by the government. All social networks legally operating in China have built-in censorship tools to filter out illegal content and information prohibited by the authorities. Anonymity does not exist as user sign-ups are linked to people’s real identities.
Authorities have stopped domestic distribution of Damus through the App Store. Google Play is not available in China, and there are several domestic third-party he Android stores that are often out of reach for foreign developers. But access seems to be intact so far. As of February 3, users already using Damus on their mobile phones can view posts without circumventing the Great Firewall (a national censorship system that blocks or slows down certain foreign websites). can be commented on.
Nostr is built to be censorship-resistant through “relays”, a type of network responsible for receiving and distributing posts to network participants. Users can publish posts to multiple relays and only see the content of the relays they are connected to. So if one relay is censored, content can be posted via another relay. But is there a way to block all relays? It will be interesting to see how app usage evolves in China in the coming weeks.
This is a developing story…
