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    Half Tones

    Accused of Plagiarizing Logo, Weibo’s New Social App Disappears

    Sep 05, 2019

    A new Instagram-like social app from microblogging platform Weibo has been removed from China app stores due to copyright concerns, just days after the release of its beta version.

    In a statement Wednesday, the new app, Lüzhou, said it had been temporarily removed to “protect copyright” and that it had reached out to “relevant parties” to resolve the issue. Earlier that day, a Weibo user had pointed out that Lüzhou’s logo was strikingly similar to a 2015 rendering by a South Korean graphic design studio.

    Lüzhou — or Oasis in English — is part photo-sharing platform and part product-review site, modeled after Instagram and a popular Chinese lifestyle platform called Xiaohongshu, or Little Red Book. Earlier this week, the app climbed to the top spot on the “most downloaded free social apps” chart on Apple’s China app store. However, it was no longer searchable by Wednesday afternoon. (Images: @绿洲 and @王___遠 on Weibo)