The rise and fall of the world’s largest gay dating app

Not only did Ma secure a formal partnership with the CDC in Beijing, but the agency later invited him to a 2012 conference where he unexpectedly reached out to Li and told the political leader to his face that he ran a gay website. Li, widely viewed as one of the more liberal members of China’s ruling elite, reacted positively. This single political endorsement helped Blued convince investors that the app was not at risk of shutting down, Liu said.

The Empire strikes back

What makes dancing on China’s Great Firewall so difficult is that the ground beneath it is inherently unstable: content allowed today may suddenly be banned tomorrow.

we Break the news In November, Blued, along with another gay dating app controlled by the same company, were removed from all mobile app stores in China at the request of the country’s cyber chief. Months later, they still haven’t returned. What many people initially hoped was an isolated, temporary decision now seems more in line with the broader crackdown on LGBT spaces in China. The longer the platform is unavailable, the less likely Blued will return in a form its users will recognize.

Blued’s fate mirrors that of many tech companies in China. Liu mentioned in her book that Ma Baoli’s first entrepreneurial idol was Jack Ma, the founder of Alibaba. Liu even tracked down Ma Baolei when he enrolled at Huban University, the highly selective two-year entrepreneur boot camp hosted by Jack Ma from 2015 to 2021. At the time, Ma Baolei probably never expected that his idol would soon become the target of one of the most sweeping regulatory crackdowns in modern Chinese history. No matter how rich or powerful you are, in China, you have to learn to dance gracefully. One mistake could cost you everything

But for skilled dancers like Jack and Paulie, failure is only a temporary setback. Jack Ma now It is said to return To manage the day-to-day affairs of Alibaba as it navigates the all-important era of artificial intelligence. Ma Baoli, who was asked to resign from Blued’s parent company after its disappointing stock market performance and subsequent takeover, is working on a new social media startup. According to the company’s public WeChat account, it has already completed two rounds of fundraising.

The other dancers

Liu’s book profiles several other dancers, including a former social media content moderator who resigned after he could no longer bear the moral burden of exercising censorship. A feminist activist is terrified to return to China after watching her peers being arrested one by one; A former Google employee who became disillusioned with the tech industry and became a science fiction novelist; And a rapper who continued to make political music, even though it meant turning down opportunities to become a major star.

For the majority of people in this group, it has become difficult to continue dancing in recent years. Beijing has long oscillated between strict control of the internet and allowing relative freedom. But in recent years, there is no doubt that the country has been going through a period of tightening. As a result, some Liu dancers have left China, while others have retreated from the spotlight.