Gay App Halts Registration

More than 33 years ago, the first HIV-positive person was diagnosed on the Chinese mainland. Beijing-based app Blued, the world’s largest homosexual social media dating platform with 40 million registered users, halted registrations for a week in late December 2018 after financial portal Caixin claimed that underage users, mainly teenagers, were using the app and had contracted HIV after conducting unprotected sex via the app. The company announced it would tighten its management. It was found that users under 18 could gain easy access to the app because the platform operators did not have strict verification mechanisms.