David then served as Senior Editor for China at Foreign Policy magazine, where he launched the first Chinese-language articles in the publication's history. After four years working on international deals for top law firms in New York and Hong Kong, David co-founded Tea Leaf Nation, a website that tracked Chinese social media, later selling it to the Washington Post Company. He also hosts POLITICO's China Watcher newsletter. David is a widely cited China expert with twenty years' experience who has served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in China, founded and sold a media company, and worked in senior positions within multiple newsrooms. Another reason might be that the Signal website doesn't have a Chinese language version.'ĭavid Wertime is Protocol China's former executive director. 'One reason might be that the app did not reach the 'threshold' of popularity that the authorities have set for censorship. 'It may seem surprising that the app hasn't been blocked until now,' Charlie Smith, the pseudonymous founder of, which tracks Chinese online censorship, told Protocol. In that case as well, Beijing made no announcement, and Clubhouse users were left to discover the ban for themselves.= Clubhouse was blocked in mainland China in early February just days after it caught fire with an elite subset of Chinese users. If Signal's outage is the result of a block, the California-based platform would be the latest foreign app to fall victim to the so-called Great Firewall of Censorship.

The secure messaging app is no longer accessible in China, according to multiple reports by users in the country who said they could only use the app via VPN, or virtual private network, as of March 15.īeijing has not made any announcement about Signal, but it is standard practice for Chinese authorities to block foreign platforms without discussing the move or explaining their reasoning for doing so.

Signal messenger down