The Cyberspace Administration of China ordered ByteDance to remove its workplace collaboration tool Feishu, whose overseas version is known as Lark, from app stores for one month over users’ being able to access sites that are restricted in China, Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing anonymous sources.
The order came after the regulator discovered a newsfeed feature on the service that allowed users to read posts from banned foreign platforms like Facebook and Twitter, according to the Bloomberg piece. The decision hasn’t been made public and it’s unclear yet when the actual removal will happen.
At the time of writing, the app is still available in domestic app stores. However, an RSS service, called RSS Connector, and a newsfeed function, called Feishu Flow, both stopped working on March 23, KrASIA found. Feishu’s foreign version, Lark, remains unaffected and is operating as normal.
“This app is deactivated and will stop service permanently in Feishu,” reads a notification within Feishu’s RSS Connector feature, referring to that specific application within the platform.
This article is part of KrASIA’s “China Brief” section, where KrASIA’s reporters will provide quick daily updates about the tech ecosystem in China.
