China’s Tinder removed from app stores amid government crackdown on cyberspace
- Tantan, owned by Beijing-based Momo, was suspended from multiple app stores in the country
Tantan, a popular Tinder-like dating app in China, has been suspended from multiple app stores in the country amid an ongoing government effort to clean up content in cyberspace.
The suspension was “on direction of governmental authorities in China”, Tantan parent company Momo said in a statement, without elaborating on the reason of the removal or a timeline for restoration. Tantan, however, is still available for download on Apple’s online App Store in China.
The Tantan app is currently China’s biggest dating platform, with 90 million registered users and six million daily active users, according to Chinese tech news site 36kr.
Nasdaq-listed Momo said it was “proactively communicating with the relevant government authorities and intends to fully cooperate with such authorities in order to restore the availability of Tantan … as soon as possible,” according to the company’s statement. Momo said it will also conduct a comprehensive internal review of the content on Tantan “to stay in full compliance with all relevant laws and regulations”.
Momo, whose popular location-based hook-up app whose has morphed into a hybrid platform with live streaming and social media features, acquired competitor Tantan in February last year for an estimated US$760 million. The Beijing-based company expected Tantan to become a new growth engine because their respective subscribers are complementary.
Shares of Momo declined 8 per cent in pre-trading on Monday.
“While we expect near-term stock pressure until more clarity on a resumption timeline post National holiday, any impact on Tantan’s new user acquisitions in the second quarter of 2019 should not translate into material revenue impact,” Karen Chan, an equity analyst at Jefferies, wrote in a research note on Monday. Chan estimated that Tantan only contributed less than 10 per cent to Momo’s revenue, with existing Tantan users unaffected by the suspension.
The suspension of Tantan comes amid an ongoing campaign by Beijing to clean up content in the country’s cyberspace. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping, the ruling Communist Party has tightened its grip on the internet and censored content deemed unsuitable – including pornography, gambling, fake news and political dissent, which is collectively described as “negative information”.
In mid-April, China’s cyber watchdog shut down nine instant messaging apps for spreading pornographic information or facilitating prostitution.
That campaign described the services as a “a severe threat to public security” for spreading illegal information, anonymous registration, fraud and facilitating offline malpractice, according to the announcement by the Cyberspace Administration of China. The nine messaging tools affected in the first batch of the clean-up included Inbilin, Liaoliao and Metalk.