FireChat, an ‘off-grid’ messaging app, finds popularity in Hong Kong protest

FireChat, an “off-the-grid” messaging app that connects to other users via Bluetooth, has become one of the most popular tools used by Hong Kong protesters for getting around network disruptions.

Chinese censors and opponents of the pro-democracy protests sweeping Hong Kong are engaging in a cat-and-mouse game with demonstrators and commentators in a bid to stop news of the unrest spreading online and, in particular, reaching the mainland.

The intervention is beyond what is normal for the usually free-talking Hong Kong, even as people are used to Chinese censors scrubbing the Internet in the mainland when mass demonstrations erupt.

Protesters have turned to FireChat in order to transmit information without being connected to the internet.

“Because there is a rumour that all of the network will be cut off by the government. And (with) Firechat, people can use bluetooth to chat, so some of the organisers are recommending us to use this so as to communicate with people when they’re sending emergency cases,” 19-year-old protester, Michael Shieng said, sitting with some other demonstrators on Thursday.

“There’s a ‘nearby’ function so when you open the bluetooth function, so you can detect the others beside you so can talk to others nearby you,” 19-year-old protester, Anna Ho, added.

The city’s streets were calm early on Thursday while police largely kept their distance from the thousands of mostly young people keeping up protests, now nearly a week old, in several areas of the global financial hub.

Tens of thousands of protesters had braved police tear gas to make their views known over the weekend.

As wireless networks went down in parts of Hong Kong on Sunday night, a possible result of saturation or network overload, demonstrators jumped onto FireChat to send updates about the protest and the latest police movements.

FireChat said there were 100,000 new users of the app on Sunday with about 33,000 users connected, at its peak.

It remained the most downloaded app from Hong Kong’s iOS App Store on Thursday, and the more people who use the app, the further its signal is broadcast. The range from one device to the next is 40-70 metres.

San Francisco-based company Open Garden is behind the app and its Chief Marketing Officer, Christophe Daligault has said that despite widespread adoption of the app during internet blackouts in Iran and Iraq earlier this year, Hong Kong’s embrace of FireChat was by far the largest.

Open Garden CEO, Micha Benoliel explained how people were using the app.

“So people are using the application to spread information of when there are roads or there are blocks, or when they need help, or groups of people need help, or just to broadcast information about what’s happening, so it’s really a tool to keep informed, and inform people around you. And they use the app because they know if the cellular network gets overloaded, then there’s still a way to be informed and keep on informing people,” he said.

“So what’s happened is people in Hong Kong use the application to stay informed and spread the information among the people who are in the protest. It can be used that way in many different countries and that was the case during the Taiwan Sunflower Movement with the students. We don’t push people to use that app to actually protest, but it’s a tool that happens to be used in this circumstance because of the technology which is really disruptive,” he added.

The protesters want Hong Kong’s leader, Leung Chun-ying, to step down by the end of Thursday and have demanded China introduce full democracy so the city can freely choose its own leader. Leung, appointed by Beijing, has refused to stand down, leaving the two sides far apart in a dispute over how much political control China should have over to Hong Kong.