A little-known offline messaging app launched by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has emerged as a key lifeline for Ugandans cut off from the internet ahead of a contentious election that could extend President Yoweri Museveni’s four-decade rule. Bitchat has surged to the top of Apple and Google app stores in the African country after clocking more than 28,000 downloads this year, according to research firm Apptopia. That marks a nearly fourfold increase over the previous two months combined.
Its usage has also jumped more than three times in Iran as internet shutdowns by the country’s clerical rulers aimed at quelling nationwide protests force people to look for workarounds, the data showed. Dorsey, who has said he is “partially to blame” for the centralization of the internet and regrets it, launched Bitchat last year after what he said was a week of coding in July. Unlike Twitter, which is now called X, Bitchat does not require internet or cellular connectivity.
It uses Bluetooth mesh technology to create a decentralized, offline network where a message from one person uses another person’s phone as a stepping stone to hop the text along until it reaches the destination. Activists during Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests in 2020 turned to apps like Bridgefy, which is powered by the same technology. Bridgefy was also downloaded over 1 million times in Myanmar in 2021 after the country’s military seized power.
Read Full Article on Club of Mozambique
[paywall]
Bobi Wine, a Ugandan pop star and main opposition candidate, urged people in the country late last month to download Bitchat, saying the government was planning a web shutdown soon to ensure citizens “do not organise, verify their election results”. “HAVE YOU DOWNLOADED BITCHAT YET?” he said in a post on X that was reposted nearly 2,000 times. On Tuesday, Ugandan authorities cut internet access and limited mobile services across the country to curb what it said were “misinformation, disinformation, electoral fraud and related risks”, according to a letter seen by Reuters. Security forces have detained hundreds of opposition supporters ahead of Thursday’s election and repeatedly fired live bullets and tear gas at campaign events in support of Wine.
[/paywall]
