Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat Explodes in Madagascar as Protesters Ditch Government-Controlled Comms

Jack Dorsey’s decentralized messaging app Bitchat experienced a massive surge in downloads in Madagascar during violent protests over water and electricity shortages, which forced authorities to impose dusk-to-dawn curfews across the ￰0￱ Trends data shows “Bitchat” searches spiking from zero to 100 in Antananarivo as protesters sought censorship-resistant communication alternatives.) September 28, 2025 Mesh Networks Enable Communication During Civil Unrest Bitchat adoption in Madagascar follows similar patterns observed during recent protests in Nepal and ￰1￱ recorded 48,781 downloads on September 8 as youth-led demonstrations against corruption and social media bans left 22 dead and forced Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli’s ￰2￱ application requires no phone numbers, email addresses, or account registration while providing end-to-end encryption through X25519 key exchange and AES-256-GCM ￰3￱ device functions as both a client and a server, creating self-organizing networks that are resilient to centralized attacks or single points of ￰4￱ fragment into 500-byte chunks, enabling transmission across multiple device hops with up to seven relay ￰5￱ store-and-forward system caches messages for offline users up to 12 hours, ensuring delivery even when direct connections are ￰6￱ peer IDs are generated for each session, protecting user privacy while eliminating the need for persistent ￰7￱ wipe capabilities, accessible through triple-tap commands, instantly clear local data if devices are compromised or ￰8￱ launched the beta in July 2025, filling TestFlight’s 10,000 capacity within ￰9￱ weekend project focuses on disaster coordination, event overflow communication, and building cross-community bridges during internet shutdowns or government censorship ￰10￱ Governments Target Encrypted Communications Simultaneously The European Union advances its controversial “Chat Control” regulation, which requires messaging apps to scan every message, photo, and video before ￰11￱ EU countries currently support the proposal, though it falls short of the 65% population threshold required for ￰12￱ Child Sexual Abuse Regulation mandates client-side scanning where software checks content on user devices before ￰13￱ argue the measure combats child abuse material, while critics warn it enables mass surveillance and weakens encryption, protecting financial ￰14￱ pressures exist in the United States, where Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has stated that his company avoids building infrastructure due to concerns about government ￰15￱ DUROV: THE ￰16￱ TO CONTROL TELEGRAM BETTER “We get too much attention from the FBI and other security agencies whenever we come to the ￰17￱ last time I was in the U.

S., I brought an engineer who works for ￰18￱ was an attempt by cybersecurity… ￰19￱ — Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) August 24, 2024 The NSA previously attempted to influence global encryption standards to make them easier to break, facts revealed through Edward Snowden’s ￰20￱ the EU, Germany holds the pivotal vote and has yet to take a final stance ahead of the anticipated October 14 Council ￰21￱ like Signal have suggested they would exit the EU market rather than compromise on encryption ￰22￱ cryptocurrency users, the regulation poses a threat to the encryption protecting wallet transactions, private keys, and identity data. Client-side scanning could theoretically extend to peer-to-peer payments, decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, or wallet operations, thereby undermining the principles of ￰23￱ advocates predict that the proposal might drive users toward decentralized Web3 platforms, which are designed for privacy by ￰24￱ tech companies, including Google and Starlink, have invested in mesh networking solutions as decentralized infrastructure alternatives.