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The latest news, analysis and opinion on Apps. In-depth analysis, industry insights and expert opinion.
Social media apps displayed on a mobile phone. Germany’s ruling party has called for fines against online platforms that fail to enforce social media curbs for children. Photo: Reuters
Germany

Germany’s ruling party seeks social media ban for children aged below 14

Spain, Greece, France, Britain and other countries are looking at similar social media bans or curbs.

United States

Meta’s Zuckerberg grilled in landmark social media addiction trial

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Style Edit

Style Edit: Lane Crawford’s beauty rewards are gifts you’ll actually want

Artificial intelligence

ByteDance ‘strengthening safeguards’ after Seedance AI video controversy

Pledge comes after Hollywood, governments speak out against tool amid deluge of video clips featuring celebrities, copyrighted characters.

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Characters from Star Wars, a Disney property, are among the copyrighted material the Seedance tool can purportedly produce. Photo: Reuters
Meituan

Meituan warns of US$3.5 billion loss amid intense food delivery price war

Food delivery giant expects losses to continue into at least the first quarter of 2026 ‘due to ongoing competition’.

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba’s Qwen tops 120 million orders in 6 days amid China’s AI shopping battle

Campaign has sparked a behavioural shift towards AI-powered shopping, which Alibaba says is becoming a more popular lifestyle choice.

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ByteDance

ByteDance joins Chinese rivals offering freebies in bid to acquire AI app users

TikTok parent plans to give more than 100,000 tech products as gifts, as well as red packets through lucky draws on the Doubao app.

Doubao is an AI app developed by TikTok owner ByteDance. Photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images
United States

California court begins social media trial amid mental health concerns

The case ‌will determine whether Instagram and YouTube harmed a woman’s mental health through addictive app design, testing Big Tech’s liability.

Artificial intelligence

ByteDance’s new model sparks stock rally as China’s AI video battle escalates

Seedance 2.0 thrills early adopters with cinematic realism and fuels debate over AI’s role in filmmaking and content creation.

Sex and relationships

Why dating in Hong Kong is so hard and how people spend thousands on agencies

Hong Kong matchmakers share how they’re helping people find love in a city where everyone is both extremely busy and wants a younger partner.

Where does Hong Kong turn to when digital romance fails? More of the city’s bachelors and bachelorettes are trading algorithms for professional human matchmakers. Illustration: Henry Wong
Artificial intelligence

Sweet surge: Qwen overtakes Yuanbao after Alibaba’s bubble tea campaign

More than 10 million free orders put Alibaba’s AI app in the spotlight amid a high-stakes battle for Spring Festival attention.

More than 10 million free orders were placed within nine hours of the campaign, overwhelming many stores in mainland China. Photo: Handout
Artificial intelligence

Red packet rumble: will Tencent’s cash giveaway work again in crowded AI market?

Analysts say strong competition from ByteDance, DeepSeek, Ant Group and Alibaba may prevent Tencent’s Yuanbao from repeating WeChat glory.

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba’s Qwen ramps up AI app race with Spring Festival giveaway blitz

Alibaba unveils US$432 million campaign to push mass-market adoption of its AI as rivalry with Tencent, Baidu and ByteDance intensifies.

Hong Kong society

Calls for stricter rules after bot bookers detected on Hong Kong sports app

Authorities say they found accounts using computer programs or other automated tools for bookings just a week after new anti-touting policy began.

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Sun Yat Sen Memorial Park Sports Centre. Photo: Dickson Lee
E-commerce

China slaps US$3.7 million fine on Kuaishou for live-streaming e-commerce breach

The penalty reflects a broader regulatory crackdown on content and operations deemed undesirable or harmful on Chinese online platforms.

Chinese regulators are tightening oversight on live-streaming e-commerce platform operators such as Kuaishou Technology. Photo: Shutterstock
Hong Kong

2016 trends from Pokemon Go to poke bowls amid viral internet nostalgia

Looking back at 2016 is viral online, but what was hot back then? We look at food, travel, health and pop culture trends from a decade ago.

Banking & finance

HSBC suffers temporary system shutdown, stopping services in Hong Kong

The bank’s mobile app and in-person services at several branches were unavailable for up to several hours for some customers during the outage.

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Artificial intelligence

China’s cloud giants race to support Moltbot, the ‘AI that actually does things’

Hyperscalers embrace the AI agent, which can execute tasks without step-by-step instructions, but privacy concerns loom large.

The global AI industry is moving towards developing AI agents capable of autonomously executing tasks on behalf of users. Photo: Shutterstock
US-China relations

TikTok cites glitch as California probes alleged Trump-critical censorship

Governor Gavin Newsom launches state review after reports of blocked posts, as TikTok blames a data-centre outage days after its US deal.

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Artificial intelligence

DeepSeek taps Alibaba open-source AI technology to boost OCR performance

The Chinese AI start-up says its latest OCR model delivers stronger performance after adopting an Alibaba-developed open-source model.

Artificial intelligence

China’s Baidu merges key app businesses to drive consumer AI push

Merger of Wenku and Wangpan into a new AI unit comes as tech firms race to turn their services and apps into the next ‘super app’.

Baidu’s move marks one of its largest reorganisations in the past two years. Photo: Shutterstock
South Korea

Google’s Gemini surges in South Korea, challenging ChatGPT, after latest launch

South Korea generated about US$21 million, or 11.4 per cent of Gemini’s cumulative revenue on Apple’s app store – second only to the US.

A Gemini 3 logo is displayed on a smartphone screen on November 19, 2025. Photo: CFOTO/Future Publishing/Getty Images
US-China relations

Who are the owners of the new TikTok US entity?

Private equity firms, tech giants and existing ByteDance backers make up the investor group behind the newly created US venture.

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US-China relations

TikTok confirms deal to create new US venture, averting shutdown by a few hours

Beijing has not officially confirmed the agreement to secure the platform’s future for 170 million Americans.

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Canada

Canada court overturns government order to shut down TikTok’s operations

The decision comes as Mark Carney seeks closer ties to China to offset the effect of Trump’s tariffs.

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Canada’s industry ministry had ordered TikTok’s business to be dissolved, citing national security risks. Photo illustration: Reuters
Low-altitude economy

Shanghai to open ‘free-to-fly’ zones covering 46% of city for consumer drones

From February 1, consumer drones will be allowed to fly in designated airspace under new rules to boost the city’s low-altitude economy.

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A drone flies over The Bund in central Shanghai in the evening. Photo: Shutterstock
DeepSeek

DeepSeek a year on: how a Chinese start-up sparked a global AI arms race

DeepSeek’s meteoric rise propelled the growth of the open-source AI ecosystem by spurring its competitors to join the movement.

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X (formerly Twitter)

Musk’s xAI sued over Grok deepfakes – this time, by mother of his child

Ashley St Clair, mother of Musk’s 13th child, said that in one photo, an image of her at 14 was altered to show her in a bikini.

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