Party over at Clubhouse, the app that had China talking

BEIJING – The repression of Muslim Uighurs, the Tiananmen Square crackdown, and S&M hook-ups — nothing was off-limits in the rambunctious, unfiltered chatrooms of Clubhouse, before China’s censors silenced the conversation.

For around a week, robust, open discussion on China pinballed across the American audio app, recently lent an air of exclusivity after an endorsement from Elon Musk.

It offered mainland and Chinese-speaking users a rare space to dissect taboos across politics and society, a plurality of voices normally muted inside China by the Communist Party.

Then late on Monday, an error message appeared to Chinese users logging on without a VPN to establish a secure connection, a telltale sign that…