Apple deleted Bitchat from the China App Store, acting on a direct order from the Cyberspace Administration of China. Jack Dorsey, who created the app, posted a screenshot of Apple’s removal notice to X with a short caption: “bitchat pulled from the china app store.”
The notice Apple sent to Dorsey is almost a copy-paste of the one it sent to Damus three years earlier. The language is identical. The accusation is identical. The CAC determined that Bitchat violates Articles 3 of the Provisions on the Security Assessment of Internet-based Information Services with Attribute of Public Opinions or Capable of Social Mobilization.
That regulation, enacted in 2018, requires any online service capable of influencing public opinion or organizing collective action to undergo a government security assessment before going live. If a service hasn’t submitted to that assessment, the CAC can order it pulled.
It targets the capacity for “public opinions” and “social mobilization.” The Chinese government has decided that the ability to communicate outside state-approved channels is itself a security threat, and Apple consistently treats that determination as sufficient grounds for deletion.
Bitchat is a peer-to-peer messaging app that operates over Bluetooth mesh networks. It requires no internet connection, no phone number, no email address, and no user account.
Messages are end-to-end encrypted and stored only on the devices involved. There are no central servers to subpoena, no user databases to hand over, and no content moderation pipeline for the CAC to plug into.
Dorsey built the initial version over a single weekend in July 2025, coding it with Goose, Block’s open-source AI assistant. He published a white paper on GitHub and opened a TestFlight beta that hit its 10,000-user cap within hours.
That design is precisely the problem from Beijing’s perspective. China’s internet censorship apparatus depends on having a chokepoint.
Hellbound and Down 