BEIJING / HONG KONG (Reuters) – Clubhouse’s private social audio app attracts masses of new users from mainland China, where the US app remains uncensored by authorities despite the flourishing discussion on rights, identity national and other sensitive issues.
Western social media applications, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, are banned in China, where the local Internet is tightly censored to remove content that could undermine the ruling Communist Party.
The Clubhouse app, launched in early 2020, experienced explosive growth in the number of users earlier this month after Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev held a discussion surprise on the platform.
Its chat rooms are only accessible through invitations from current members, and as of Sunday, invitations to the platform were sold for between 50 and 400 yuan (between $ 7.73 and $ 69.59) to popular Chinese e-commerce sites. .
Reuters directly watched several “Chinese” conversations in Chinese where thousands of users listened to extensive audio discussions on topics such as the Xinjiang Detention Camps, Taiwan Independence, and the Hong Kong National Security Act.
China’s cyber authorities have become increasingly stringent in recent years, expanding the scope of banned apps, media and social networking sites in the country.
While Clubhouse remains uncensored, it is only available on iOS devices and is not available in Apple’s app store, both important barriers to widespread use in China.
Mainland Chinese users can access the app by changing the location of their app store.
It is unclear why the app remains unlocked in China, although some foreign social sites with small Chinese followers manage to operate under the radar of censors, including 8kun, a central hub for QAnon followers.
In a club chat focused on Hong Kong politics, activists, journalists and artists discussed former US President Trump and his base of support for the former colony.
Another popular Chinese-language club on the site as of Saturday involved a rare open exchange between netizens in mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong over increased political tensions in the region.
The debate became a hot topic on China’s Weibo network, similar to Twitter, on Saturday.
“I don’t know how long this environment can last,” a user said in a popular Weibo post that he liked more than 65,000 times. “But I will definitely remember this moment in the history of the Internet.”
(1 $ = 6,464 Chinese yuan to renminbi)
Cate Cadell and Pei Li reports, additional reports from Jessie Pang in Hong Kong; Edited by Kim Coghill