The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

-d -h -min -sec

FireChat - the app fueling the Hong Kong protests in the absence of internet and network service

Author

By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

October 1, 2014 | 3 min read

There’s an app holding the Hong Kong pro-democracy protests together as it enters its fourth evening despite clashes with police.

The 'Umbrella Revolution' continues

Protestors participating in the so-called 'Umbrella Revolution' have been using an “off-the-grid” smartphone app called FireChat to organise the peaceful occupation of Central Hong Kong in the face of limited Wi-Fi and carrier services in the area.

FireChat, an anonymous communications app which connects with smartphones up to 200 feet away, has become a vital tool for protestors - as it does not rely on Wi-Fi or mobile coverage.

Instead, the app establishes a separate communications network between the smartphones in a user's radius. However as the volume of users increases, so does the chatroom’s coverage, with each device operating as an individual comms node.

Protestors have become reliant upon the app to organise the civil disobedience, especially as more conventional services such as Instagram has been blocked in mainland China.

Furthermore, posts referencing the protest have been systematically removed from social media sites such as Weibo, as part of a media blackout being enacted across the wider country.

Open Garden, the company behind FireChat’s chief executive Micha Benoliel told Time that the app has been downloaded in Hong Kong over 200,000 times in the space of a few days.

Benoliel said he was not completely surprised by how widely-used the FireChat was proving to be as it was also used similarly in Taiwan last March.

He added that Open Garden supports “freedom of speech and access to information” and although the app was not designed to help protests, “If this application can help in this way, it’s very aligned with the mission of the company”.

FireChat retweeted advice for those using the app however, claiming that the open nature of the chatrooms means that police forces can monitor - if not trace - conversations.

Trending

Industry insights

View all
Add your own content +