Bitchat searches, downloads spike in Madagascar amid protests

Protests erupted in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, last Thursday over ongoing water and power cuts, with demonstrations later spreading across the country.

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Block CEO Jack Dorsey’s decentralized peer-to-peer messaging service Bitchat has seen a spike in downloads from the African island nation of Madagascar amid protests, following a similar uptick during unrest in Nepal and Indonesia earlier in September.

A under the X handle callebtc, who is working on the messaging service, on Sunday, “Bitchat downloads spiking in Madagascar,” along with screenshots of the protest’s news coverage.

“Bitchat” trending in Google searches

Callebtc Bitcoin didn’t share specific download numbers, but Google Trends search for “Bitchat” a spike from 0 to 100 on Friday (over 90 days) in Madagascar, especially Antananarivo.

Google Trends how popular a search term is over a specific period of time, with 100 being the highest, and showing “peak popularity,” and 0 showing low interest, or “not enough data.”

At the same time, phrases such as “Bitchat download” and “how to use Bitchat” were among the top five related queries, and tagged as “breakout topics,” which means they had a “tremendous increase” in activity, according to Google.

Messaging App, Censorship, Social Media, Data, Jack Dorsey — *Searches related to Bitchat have spiked since protests began in Madagascar. Source:*

Chrome-Stats Bitchat has been downloaded 365,307 times since its launch, with over 21,000 coming in the last day and more than 71,000 in the last week. However, it doesn’t specify which regions were responsible for the bulk of downloads.

Protests over power and water cuts

Protests in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, on Thursday over ongoing water and power cuts, with some demonstrators clashing with police and reports of looting. To appease protesters, the government sacked its energy minister.

Authorities in Madagascar also imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew to stifle further unrest. More demonstrations were held on Friday and Saturday across the country.

It comes only weeks after a amid a series of violent protests over corruption, which resulted in a short-lived social media ban and protestors forced to search for other ways to communicate and coordinate. Indonesia also had a similar uptick in downloads after corruption-related protests erupted.

Majority of Madagascar’s population lacks internet access

Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world. Out of a population of just under 32 million, the global technology data platform DataReportal that there were only 6.6 million people in Madagascar who had access to the internet at the start of 2025.

The platform also estimates there were over 18 million mobile connections active in the country in early 2025 and noted that “some of these connections may only include services such as voice and SMS, and some may not include access to the internet.”

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Dorsey for Bitchat in July. It for internet-free, encrypted communication, and to the white paper, the network is fully decentralized with no central servers, accounts, email addresses, phone numbers to register, or infrastructure dependencies.

Encrypted messaging services face Chat Control law in EU

The European Union is in the process of cracking down on private messaging services. Lawmakers are trying to pass a “Chat Control” law, which would requiring services such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal to allow regulators to screen messages before they are encrypted and sent.