Gay dating app Grindr has disappeared from multiple app stores in China as authorities tighten control of the country's already heavily policed internet and purge online behaviour the ruling Communist Party dislikes. The country's cyber authority is in the midst of a month-long campaign to root out illegal and sensitive content during the Lunar New Year holiday and February's Winter Olympics. Although the world's most populous nation decriminalised homosexuality in 1997, same-sex marriage is illegal and LGBTQ issues remain taboo. The LGBTQ community is under pressure as censorship of web content combines with a ban on depictions of gay romance in films. Data from mobile research firm Qimai shows that Grindr was removed from Apple's App Store in China on Thursday.

Avatarify, an AI face animator app that has gone viral in TikTok videos, has been removed from Apple's China app store, and analysts said the move was mainly due to concerns about invasion of privacy. "The potential risk of invasion of privacy is the major reason behind the removal of AI apps like Avatarify," said Qin An, head of the Beijing-based Institute of China Cyberspace Strategy, on Monday. Unscrupulous individuals or groups might make money from these apps by using them to attract the public's attention first and then violating personal privacy, according to Qin. Qin's comments came after Avatarify - a face-changing app adopting artificial intelligence (AI) to allow users to replace their own faces with other people's faces for photography and videos - was removed from Apple's China app store. The app started trending on February 17 and ranked first on February 28 with more than 1.5 million downloads, according to a report by thepaper.cn. Chinese netizens have used the app to make funny videos, which went viral and started trending on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.