Duolingo, the Nasdaq-listed language learning app, is back in China’s Apple App Store and Android stores nearly a year after it disappeared from the country’s app stores.
Users in China found the Pittsburg-based app unavailable for downloads last August amid the country’s sweeping education crackdown, including restrictions on for-profit afterschool tutoring. At the time, Duolingo told local media that the company “received instructions to strengthen the app’s content compliance mechanism.” The app entered China in 2019.
China has in recent years been closing regulatory loopholes in apps of all kinds. Data-heavy services from video games to livestreaming platforms are asked to implement strict content moderation in order to sustain a “healthy” digital environment.
While the core services of American titans like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Google have long been unavailable in China, a handful of other foreign tech companies began to voluntarily shutter or revamp their products in the country as Beijing introduced new strict data laws that led to risi …
