Chinese ‘sexual health’ app used for porn, prostitution – because of course it is

Pornography and prostitution are both illegal in China. But humans being the sexual creatures that we are, both are fairly readily available to those who seek them. And despite China’s tight control over the domestic internet, it seems that one particular app has slipped through the cracks and is facilitating users looking for both of them.

The app in question is called Pansidong, and to be honest, it’s hard to tell whether this is a case of developers intentionally helping users break the law or simply a case of not thinking a design all the way through. On its iTunes page, the app is promoted as an interest-based friend-finding app that promotes sexual health. It has friend-finding, Snapchat-style photo-sharing, and chat features. It also links up to compatible sex toys so that you can control them remotely while chatting.

Unsurprisingly, Chinese reporters from the Lawcourt Evening News, found that the app’s friend-finding features were being used by prostitutes, the chat features were being used to arrange transactions and discuss payment terms, and the photo-sharing features were being used to share nudes and other pornographic images.

It’s hard to believe the app has been around for this long without legal trouble.

More concerning, the app makes no real attempt to keep minors out. When first opened, it does have an “under 18 not allowed” warning, but it disappears automatically after a few seconds. Users can sign up with any existing social media accounts (like WeChat, Weibo, or QQ accounts), but user ages on those sites aren’t confirmed or policed, and Pansidong doesn’t do anything else to ensure minors aren’t making use of the app.

Pansidong was developed by a company called Hangzhou Pansidong Network Technology. When contacted by Tech in Asia for comment on this story, a representative of the company responded:

We place great importance on this, and are currently investigating. We thank the media for their attention, and we will issue a statement once our investigation has concluded.

Hangzhou Pansidong Network Technology was founded in 2014, and the first version of the Pansidong app went online in 2015, a few months before the company claims it raised a US$2 million pre-A funding round.

Frankly, given the screenshots in the Lawcourt Evening News‘s story – which depict very blunt conversations in which users arrange to pay for sex – it’s hard to believe the app has been around for this long without having gotten into some kind of legal trouble, or even trouble with Apple. True, both prostitution and pornograpy can be found on other digital platforms from time to time – including very mainstream ones – but Pansidong seems to make it easy enough that one wonders if that was the developers’ original intention.

In any event, the cat’s out of the bag now. It will be interesting to see how both the app and authorities respond to these revelations.