China has pretty stern guidelines on which sites allowed on in the country. Popular apps and websites like Google Maps, Facebook, Twitter and Google Search websites are banned in China, going people alternatives like Weibo, Baidu and others. Even though a lot of users, mostly foreigners, rely on VPNs to access these sites, no company, in its official capacity can lower these walls of restriction without consequences.
In one such instance, China's ByteDance, which owns the popular app TikTok, has been on the receiving end of Chinese regulators' wrath. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) has ordered ByteDance to temporarily suspend its work-from-home app called Feishu, which combines the functions of Slack, Skype and Google Docs. This is a temporary restriction, which could last for about a month, people familiar with the matter were quoted as saying, SCMP reported.
Why has China ordered the ban?
While there's no official word on why the suspension has been ordered, sources tell this is a punishment for a feature that allowed Chinese users to browse content from banned sites Facebook and Twitter.
With the ban, users have alternative apps from Tencent and Alibaba. DingTalk was the most downloaded free app on China's iOS App Store during the lockdown.
