Apple said it complied with orders from the Chinese government to remove the Meta-owned WhatsApp and Threads from its App Store in China. Apple also removed Telegram and Signal from China.
The New York Times similarly wrote that “a person briefed on the situation said the Chinese government had found content on WhatsApp and Threads about China’s president, Xi Jinping, that was inflammatory and violated the country’s cybersecurity laws. The specifics of what was in the content was unclear, the person said.”
“These apps and many foreign apps are normally blocked on Chinese networks by the ‘Great Firewall’—the country’s extensive cybersystem of censorship—and can only be used with a virtual private network or other proxy tools,” Reuters wrote.
“For years, Apple has bowed to Beijing’s demands that it block an array of apps, including newspapers, VPNs, and encrypted messaging services,” The New York Times noted yesterday.
You can sideload on iOS. It’s not nearly as easy it is on Android, but it’s not hard. Any of us that are developing are doing it consistently.
That said. Sideloading isn’t exactly easy when China’w great firewall is blocking direct download sites and monitoring / censoring search engines, VPNs, ISPs, etc. Things are not like they are in the west.