It seems that Apple is scouring its Chinese App Store for any remaining services that do not match well with Chinese censors. Two RSS reader apps, Reeder and Fiery Feeds, said this week that their iOS apps have been removed in China because of content that is deemed "illegal" in the region.
Apps are forbidden in China for all kinds of purposes. Feed readers of RSS, or Real Simple Syndication, are especially alarming to the Authority because they import content from third-party websites, encourage users to circumvent China's Great Firewall and otherwise access banned details.
Those who use RSS readers in China are scarce, as the majority of Chinese Internet users—940 million as of late — receive their dose of news through domestic services from algorithmic news aggregators such as ByteDance's Toutiao and WeChat 's built-in content subscription feature to popular local apps.
Significant political events and regulatory reforms can cause fresh waves of app deletions, but it's not clear why the two RSS feed readers were taken out this week. Inoreader, a related service, was removed from the Chinese Apple App Store back in 2017. Feedly is now absent from the nearest App Store.
The history of China's RSS crackdown goes back to 2007, when the Authority launched a general ban on web-based RSS feed aggregators. The new events may well be part of Apple's normal business in China: cleaning up international information systems working outside Beijing, regardless of their scale.
Before its prohibition, Fiery Feeds had around 1,000 active monthly users in China, TechCrunch said. Its iOS version was available in China without the use of a VPN, but some of the synced utilities it supported were barred. Reeder and Apple could not be contacted for comment immediately.
It seems [the ban] comes from the Chinese government, so I do not see any use in appealing to Apple, said a spokesperson at Fiery Feeds.
