Nepal’s Social Media Ban Causes Bitchat Messenger Downloads to Rise

This week decentralized Bitchat messenger Jack Dorsey, a well-known figure in the crypto community, has seen a surge in downloads among Nepali users during the social media lockdown.

Interestingly, their growth outpaced the surge in installations in Indonesia, where 12,000 downloads per day were recorded during the latest round of protests.

An open source developer currently working on Bitchat noted the ease of access to the messenger, saying it «works everywhere» without a phone number, email, account registration, or even internet.

Users can exchange messages locally using Bluetooth over “network connections,” with the devices acting solely as “client and server,” thus providing “censorship resistance and surveillance resistance.”

Protests in Nepal began after the government banned 26 social media platforms that published a series of videos showing the lavish lifestyles of the children of politicians.

In Indonesia, protests began in late August over the government’s poor handling of economic problems. However, the protests were not accompanied by blocking of social networks.

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