Nepal protests drive spike in Bitchat downloads

Jack Dorsey’s peer-to-peer decentralised messaging service Bitchat saw a significant spike in downloads from users in Nepal during this week’s social media crackdown.

That’s according to Cashu founder and X user @callebtc, who noted that the uptick in downloads was even larger than a previous spike from Indonesia that saw 12,000 daily downloads during another series of protests.

The open-source dev, who is currently working on Bitchat, touted the messaging service’s ease of access, claiming it “works everywhere” with no phone number, email, account registration, or even internet.

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It does this by allowing users to send each other messages in a local area using Bluetooth over “mesh networks,” with the devices solely acting as “client and server.”

As a result, it claims to provide “censorship resistance, surveillance resistance, and infrastructure independence.”

Bitchat bypasses Nepal social media ban

Anti-corruption protests in Nepal took place this week after the government banned 26 social media platforms.

Protestors claimed it was an attempt to stop the “nepo-kid” anti-corruption campaign which focused on a series of social media videos seemingly showing the lavish lifestyles of the children of Nepal’s political elite.

The protests escalated after Nepalese police killed 22 protestors and injured hundreds more. During the unrest, Nepal’s parliament burned down, along with the house of Nepal’s former prime minister.

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The current prime minister has since resigned and Nepal’s military is now patrolling the streets while a curfew is in place. The social media ban was also lifted on Monday night.

As for Indonesia, protests started in late August over the government’s approach to economic hardships. This protest, however, didn’t face any social media ban.

Protos has reached out to @callebtc for comment and will update this piece should we hear anything back.