Wonder what so valuable in their source code that they would choose this route.
I'll wear that tinfoil hat, so you don't have to.
Its the spying software they don't want U.S. agencies getting hold of.
And yeah, its better for the nation as a whole if the app was just outright banned, better than some American corp getting it and immediately giving it to the CIA and NSA to further spy on Americans with.
EDIT: Also, its quite likely that the spying software is just a copy of something the U.S. already uses. China loves its "OC donut steal" design philosophy.
The spyware part of the software is unlikely to be anything special. If somebody willingly downloads and installs your trojan horse and gives it permission to record video and upload data to a server, that makes your job a lot easier.
Its the spying software they don't want U.S. agencies getting hold of.
You don't even need to go that far. Just like the Twitter Admin panel a month or two back, I'm willing to bet most/all of these companies just don't want to general public being able to find out how invasive they're being with their spying and how much their algorithms are actually manipulating people and what they consume.
I'll wear that tinfoil hat, so you don't have to.
Its the spying software they don't want U.S. agencies getting hold of.
And yeah, its better for the nation as a whole if the app was just outright banned, better than some American corp getting it and immediately giving it to the CIA and NSA to further spy on Americans with.
EDIT: Also, its quite likely that the spying software is just a copy of something the U.S. already uses. China loves its "OC donut steal" design philosophy.
The spyware part of the software is unlikely to be anything special. If somebody willingly downloads and installs your trojan horse and gives it permission to record video and upload data to a server, that makes your job a lot easier.
You don't even need to go that far. Just like the Twitter Admin panel a month or two back, I'm willing to bet most/all of these companies just don't want to general public being able to find out how invasive they're being with their spying and how much their algorithms are actually manipulating people and what they consume.