Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat App Sees Downloads Spike in Uganda Over Internet Shutdown Worries
“Recently, the app drew attention during Nepal’s Gen Z protests, where it supported protesters in overthrowing the government. On September 4, authorities banned 26 platforms, including Facebook, X, YouTube, and Signal, to curb demonstrations against nepotism and a digital tax. Downloads jumped from 3,000 to 50,000 daily, with 48,000 in Nepal alone on September 8, equating to 38% of global installations. Users leveraged Bitchat’s mesh networking capabilities, with each node extending reach up to 30 meters in crowded areas, to organise marches that culminated in arson at the parliament building and the regime’s fall.”
Bitchat is a decentralised peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth mesh networks. No internet required, no servers, no phone numbers. This also means ideally you want to have installed it BEFORE any outages.
It is an open source and offline mesh chat application, which means each device acts as both client and server, automatically discovering peers and relaying messages across multiple hops to extend the network's reach. It is similar to what Meshtastic does with license-free radio. There is zero registration required, and therefore it is also not easy to identify anyone using it.
It does now also have Geohash channels, where someone on that channel will extend it to the Internet, if available. The Internet side can use the Tor network if available. Broadcast messages are public, but if you know someone's handle on Bitchat, you can chat with full end-to-end-encryption.
It has an interesting feature to emergency delete all chats, keys, etc when you triple tap on the app title. And apart from protests and censorship resistance, it is also ideal for any natural disasters where infrastructure has been knocked out.
The app runs on iOS as well as Android.
See
https://gizmodo.com/jack-dorseys-bitchat-sees-downloads-spike-in-uganda-over-internet-shutdown-worries-2000706828 and get the app at
https://bitchat.free#
technology #
opensource #
decentralised #
protests #
disasters Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat Sees Downloads Spike in Uganda Over Internet Shutdown Worries
Ugandans have good reason to believe there will be a blackout soon.
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