Updated 14:17 am 16 April 2018: Weibo has issued a second statement today to exclude gay-themed contents from the three-month purge. Now the “Cleaning Up” campaign only targets vulgar and violent contents.

Chinese popular social networking platform Weibo announced that they would remove gay-themed contents from its platform (in Chinese), prompting a storm of online protests.

To comply with China’s new cybersecurity law, the Twitter-like micro-blogging service said that they will launch a three-month “clean-up” campaign to filter comics, games, and related short videos and picture/text posts that involve pornography, violence or homosexuality. The statement added that the crackdown covers all contents related to “gay” and “danmei (耽美), China’s version of what is often called “slash” fiction. Weibo claims that it has removed over 56,000 posts and closed over a hundred accounts involving “illegal” content.

The move sparked online outcry where Weibo users protest with the hashtag “I am gay”, which was used 170,000 times before Weibo ultimately banned it. In addition to gay people, the country’s liberals who were enraged by the crackdown also made their voices heard.

Chinese society, especially the online space, is adopting a more open attitude towards gay culture, resulting in a vibrant LGBT app scene to serve estimated tens of millions of people in the LGBT community in China. Top players in the field include Blued, LESDO, Ahola, and more.

But the tolerance still have to find its way to the government level. Gay love and LGBT culture have always been sensitive issues and constant censorship topics in the state’s online crackdown.  As recent as 2016, the state issued a ban to portray homosexual relationships on television dramas and web series (in Chinese).

The collision comes at the height of China’s online crackdown that affected a range of popular apps such as new aggregating service Toutiao and short video hubs Douyin and Kuaishou.

Xiaohun, a gay KOL (key opinion leader) from China, runs a successful WeChat official account dedicated to the LGBT community in China. Starting in June 2015, he now has over 20,000 followers on WeChat. He mostly writes about same-sex marriage, equality, and sometimes he shares his life in a rural island in Fujian Province, where he lives together with his boyfriend.

If you can’t see anything, try iQiyi instead.

Once Xiaohun learned that  Gay Pride would take place at the end of October, he knew that he had to go—with his boyfriend.

“We’ve never been to a gay pride parade before, so I asked around on my WeChat official account,” Xiaohun told TechNode. “I received lots of comments. Some said we could meet up here at the parade, so I created a group and chatted on and off.”

For Xiaohun, the WeChat official account isn’t just a place to post personal photos and diaries but serves as a platform for the underserved LGBT community in China.

“In the past, gay people didn’t have their own platform,” he said. “Now that we have WeChat official accounts, we can report on our own stories by ourselves. I’m the reporter who reports on myself.”

As a KOL, Xiaohun has to put himself in the spotlight and often times shares his personal stories as a gay man. “I’ve come out to my colleagues and parents when I started to write,” he said. “I had no concerns, and could just write whatever I want.”

“I got thousands of followers in the first month—way faster than I expected,” said Xiaohun, adding that WeChat, as a platform, is a good place for the LGBT community to exchange information.

The world’s biggest gay social-networking app, U.S.-based Grindr, has sold a majority stake to Chinese game developer Beijing Kulun Tech Co., chaired by newly-minted billionaire Zhou Yahui.

The sale will give Beijing Kulun a 60 percent stake in the business for $93 million USD in cash, the company said. Beijing Kulun, which listed in 2015, saw a 10 percent stock boost following the announcement. Mr. Zhou became a billionaire following the company’s listing, and is now valued at approximately $1.7 billion USD.

Grindr CEO Joel Simkhai said in a blog post that the partnership is a “huge vote of confidence in our vision to connect gay men to even more of the world around them,” hinting at Grindr’s potential to take on the gay networking market in China.

Currently that market is dominated by apps serving the gay male market, just like Grindr, though the number of apps for lesbian users are also on the rise. China’s biggest gay app (and Grindr’s biggest potential competitor) is BlueD, founded in 2000 by ex-police officer Geng Le. BlueD’s arch-rival Zank has also grown quickly in the past two years, followed by Jackd, G-Show and Waitta.

China’s gay networking market also features a series of odd services targeted directly at the local market. Queers, an app designed to help young people arrange sham marriages between gay and lesbian people, saw massive growth in the past year. GeeYuu, an app focussed on gay gaming communities is now in the top five most popular apps targeted at the gay market in China.

Related: 5 Things You Should Know About China’s Booming Gay App Market