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HONG KONG -- Audio chat app Clubhouse appeared to have been blocked in mainland China on Monday evening following politically sensitive discussions on the platform that caught the attention of Chinese authorities, users said.
At 7 p.m., users across China began to report system errors when accessing the U.S.-developed social media app, according to users in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Guangzhou. A notification appeared when they tried to open the app, saying "a secure connection to the server cannot be made" -- a typical error that occurs when Chinese regulators block a website.
Discussions about the Clubhouse outage in China were trending among Chinese-speaking users on the app Monday night. A number of related chatrooms have reached the platform's maximum capacity of 5,000 participants.
"The internet police are acting fast this time," one user in Shanghai said.
"I saw this coming, so I downloaded a VPN in advance," another said, referring to virtual private networks, which are designed to mask internet usage. VPNs are popular among people in mainland China to dodge internet censorship, but they are illegal there.
Clubhouse's developer could not immediately be reached for comment.
The popularity of the Silicon Valley-founded Clubhouse took off across Asia last week after Tesla founder Elon Musk made his debut on the platform.
More at https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Clubhouse-users-now-unable-to-use-app-in-mainland-China
At 7 p.m., users across China began to report system errors when accessing the U.S.-developed social media app, according to users in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and Guangzhou. A notification appeared when they tried to open the app, saying "a secure connection to the server cannot be made" -- a typical error that occurs when Chinese regulators block a website.
Discussions about the Clubhouse outage in China were trending among Chinese-speaking users on the app Monday night. A number of related chatrooms have reached the platform's maximum capacity of 5,000 participants.
"The internet police are acting fast this time," one user in Shanghai said.
"I saw this coming, so I downloaded a VPN in advance," another said, referring to virtual private networks, which are designed to mask internet usage. VPNs are popular among people in mainland China to dodge internet censorship, but they are illegal there.
Clubhouse's developer could not immediately be reached for comment.
The popularity of the Silicon Valley-founded Clubhouse took off across Asia last week after Tesla founder Elon Musk made his debut on the platform.
More at https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/Clubhouse-users-now-unable-to-use-app-in-mainland-China
