Hong Kong Protestors Flock to FireChat App Amidst Social Media Censorship
Sign-ups for the FireChat app have ballooned during Hong Kong's ongoing democracy protests. The app lets users chat without an Internet connection.
About 100,000 people in Hong Kong downloaded FireChat within 22 hours, reports TechinAsia. The messaging app uses mesh networks to allow users to communicate with each other without Internet access or cell phone reception.
The pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have resulted in record levels of social media censorship in China. From the South China Morning Post:
Weiboscope, a site that tracks censored posts on Sina Weibo (China’s Twitter), shows the government’s heavy-handed censorship tactics. Photos that had been taken down from the micro-blogging platform include images of the Hong Kong protests, political protests from other countries and screenshots of text from organizers.
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