12 August, 2017
The secretive approach of launching the app could cause additional difficulties for Facebook with the government of China that maintains strict oversight as well as control over tech companies outside China.
The report claims Facebook might be trying a new way to get into China: by giving the greenlight for a local company to release a new app that doesn't share Facebook's name.
Colorful Balloons looks and operates nearly exactly like the Moments app, except without any mention of Facebook, so much so that it could easily be considered a local clone. The app, though, will reportedly not carry the Facebook label.
Facebook has always been keen to find a way into China, where the social network has been banned since 2009.
Facebook has finally managed to sneak into China. The world's largest country usually favors domestic businesses as a national policy, often rendering the enterprises quasi-private in the process.
China is infamous for its crackdown on internet content it deems obscene or a violation of its laws.
Facebook is blocked in China, and so are many other USA apps. The government directed tech companies in July to block their users from accessing secure internet systems known as virtual private networks (VPNs).
Western social media websites like Facebook and Twitter are blocked by China's censors, which has helped drive up the popularity of home-grown messaging app WeChat, owned by Tencent and microblogging service Weibo. She appeared in a photo taken at a meeting held between officials at Facebook and the government of Shanghai.
"We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country in different ways", the company said.
Facebook has also experimented with getting back into China by creating a censorship tool that automatically suppresses certain posts in specific geographic areas, The New York Times reported back in November.
