On the 17th of May, a new app going by the name of Remove China Apps made its way onto the Google Play Store. The app served the purpose of scanning all the Chinese apps that were available on Android and then going on to uninstall them. Over the short time that it was available, it gained quite some popularity – evident from the fact that it was downloaded more than a million times and managed some pretty positive reviews at the same time.
Google though has since delisted the particular app from its Play Store. In accordance with what Google’s Deceptive Behavior rules say – an app cannot encourage users to remove other third-party apps. Considering the app was there to encourage users to uninstall Chinese apps from their Android devices – it violated Google’s policy and hence there was no option but to remove it.
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Indeed it was Google that confirmed to Gadgets 360 that it did in fact take the decision to pull the popular app because it violated Google Play’s Deceptive Behavior Policy which doesn’t allow apps that “encourage or incentivise users into removing or disabling third-party apps.”
The fact that the app even showed up in the first place is the prime example of the Anti-Chinese sentiment that many people all across the globe have adopted – this being fueled by the latest Coronavirus pandemic. Indeed many people say that China is solely to be blamed for the pandemic. Also, amongst other things, the fact that an issue escalated on the India-China border means that many Indians too would have been motivated to download the app or take an Anti-Chinese stance.
Also, this isn’t even the first app that has been removed from the Play Store that rides on the back of Anti-Chinese sentiments. Indeed another app going by the name of the Mitron app too adopted an Anti-Chinese sentiment and hence it too saw a similar fate to the Remove China Apps.
