The Apple News app is running in the United States only, and has been since its launch last June. The app allows users to find in one place, all of the news stories that they are interested in, published in the style of the publications that they came from. The feature is currently being tested in Britain and Australia. If you are from the U.S., you should be able to access Apple News from any country, even though, as we pointed out, the service is for U.S. users only, at the moment.

According to the New York Times, there actually is one country where Apple has closed down Apple News. In China, iOS users from the United States, who back home and in other countries would normally see a list of articles to read based on the criteria they set, are instead receiving an error message. The notice says “Can’t refresh right now. News isn’t supported in your current region.” Apple has disabled Apple News in China because it does not want to be forced to censor the content. In the country, the government puts the onus on corporations to censor sensitive material from news feeds.

Deciding that it isn’t worth the bother and the potential for problems, especially in a country that was responsible for $13 billion of Apple’s calendar third quarter revenue, second to the U.S., the tech titan has decided just to shut down Apple News in China. So if you’re from the U.S. and wondering why your Apple News app isn’t working in the country, now you know. Still, knowing why it is disabled in China doesn’t seem to appease everyone. Larry Salibra, who founded software testing service Pay4Bugs, finds it “very disconcerting” that Apple is censoring news content that he already paid for and downloaded on his phone in the U.S., before he entered China.

Apple has refused to comment on the situation.

source: Reddit, NewYorkTimes