The social networking app is an audio chat that just sent a photo on a smartphone on January 26, 2021 in Berlin, Germany.
Thomas Trutschel | Photothek | Getty Images
LONDON – The audio-only social media app appears to have been blocked in China.
Queeny Li, a communications professional based in Shenzhen, and Michael Norris, a technical analyst in Shanghai, told CNBC that the Clubhouse app no longer works for them.
“The clubhouse was blocked,” Norris said, responding to what several media reports have said.
“A club ban was expected,” Norris said. “Indeed, the sudden rush to shed light on the Club House was driven by the sense that a ban was imminent.”
Some Clubhouse users in China are now shown an error message when they open the app. The message states: “An SSL error occurred and could not be securely connected to the server.”
The US-based clubhouse, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese embassy in London did not immediately respond to a request from CNBC for comment.
The uninvited discussion app, which allows people to chat with their voices instead of text messages, has become very popular over the past few months.
It initially gained traction with the Silicon Valley tech community, but a few weeks ago the app was downloaded to smartphones across China.
Although the iPhone app is not available for download from the Chinese App Store, it was possible for people in China to get it by using Apple IDs overseas.
Chinese e-commerce sites have been selling thousands of Clubhouse invitations for up to $ 77, according to The Financial Times.
Clubhouse, which is worth around $ 1 billion and boasts more than 2 million users, was working for people in China who managed to download the app and receive an invitation until Monday, when the inward block.
Unlike other apps, Clubhouse was not censored by the Communist Party of China and users were free to talk about anything they pleased.
Chinese authorities have banned U.S. social media apps like Facebook and Twitter, and the results of internet searches are censored by the government. The country’s digital censorship on overseas platforms has been dubbed the “Great Firewall.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has been slowing down Chinese tech companies like Huawei and TikTok over the past few years.
“At one point, China is cracking down on any technology that will challenge the government’s control over society,” said Abishur Prakash, a geopolitical expert at the Center for Innovation. future normalization (CIF), to CNBC.
“This is nothing new,” he said. “But, on another level, China is quickly ‘unattractive’ from US technology, even the new platforms and services. This is driving the divide between the US and China.”