The Iranian authorities’s try to dam the Telegram messaging utility within the nation has backfired, as customers discover methods to avoid nationwide firewalls and on-line controls, based on Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov.
“Iran banned Telegram years in the past,” Durov mentioned on Friday; nevertheless, tens of tens of millions of customers within the nation have managed to entry the appliance by way of digital personal networks (VPNs) and different related instruments, he added.
VPNs route net visitors by means of servers distributed across the globe to masks the true Web Protocol (IP) addresses of customers and obscure their places. This permits people with VPN entry to bypass nationwide on-line restrictions. Durov mentioned:
“The federal government hoped for mass adoption of its surveillance messaging apps, however received mass adoption of VPNs as an alternative. Now, 50 million members of the digital resistance in Iran are joined by over 50 million extra in Russia.”
Decentralized applied sciences like blockchain, crypto and encrypted messaging purposes can mitigate or neutralize state-imposed on-line restrictions and surveillance infrastructure, selling particular person liberty, proponents of decentralized know-how say.
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Customers flip to decentralized alternate options amid on-line blackouts
The federal government of Iran imposed a nationwide web blackout in January 2026, amid rising protests and civil unrest, which remains to be in impact as a result of ongoing battle between Israel, the USA and Iran.
Residents within the nation can nonetheless entry the web by means of Starlink, a satellite-based community, regardless of the federal government’s ban on it, or talk by way of BitChat, a messaging utility that makes use of Bluetooth radio waves to kind a mesh community between gadgets.
BitChat’s mesh community transforms every gadget right into a relay node that transfers information to different gadgets operating the appliance inside vary, bypassing on-line and satellite-based programs completely.
The federal government of Nepal imposed a social media ban in September 2025 amid rising protests, inflicting a spike in BitChat downloads.
Bitchat was downloaded over 48,000 instances in Nepal the week of the social media ban, and the federal government of Nepal was toppled by protestors that very same month.
The applying recorded an analogous obtain spike in Madagascar amid protests, which additionally occurred across the similar time because the political revolution in Nepal.
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