[x-pubpol] This Is the App That's Fueling the Uprising in Venezuela

[Joly MacFie]

(via Farber)


This Is the App That's Fueling the Uprising in Venezuela
By Patrick Tucker
Feb 24 2014
<
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2014/02/app-s-fueling-uprising-venezuela/79240/
>

Entrepreneur Bill Moore was in his Austin, Texas, office last Thursday,
watching explosive growth for his company's walkie-talkie app, Zello,
inside Venezuela. Zello had become the favorite app of protest organizers
there after recently hitting the mark as the most popular app in Ukraine.
Over the past few days in Venezuela, the protests ballooned following
rapidly rising food prices, controversy over President Nicolas Maduro's
economic policies, public dissatisfaction over crime and multiple other
factors.

Moore was finding that in Venezuela that popularity had a price. Shortly
after 9 p.m., his Twitter feed blew up with messages from users inside the
country. The government-owned Internet service provider, CANTV, which hosts
90 percent of Venezuela's Internet traffic, was blocking the app as well as
access to Zello's website. Downloads were dropping off considerably.

Zello sent out the following Tweet: "If you are in Venezuela and familiar
with network diagnostics tools, please respond, we need your help to
understand the block applied."

If you are in Venezuela and familiar with network diagnostics tools, please
respond, we need your help to understand the block applied.

-- Zello Inc (@Zello) February 21, 2014

As Moore describes it, the response, like the protests themselves, was
immediate and enormous. People inside Venezuela and many more from around
the world wrote in with advice. Moore, Alexey Gavrilov, Zello's co-founder
and chief technical officer, and the company's programmers worked
feverishly through the night on a new version of the app to get around
theCANTV blockade. "This was the most important thing in the company,"
Moore told Defense One. "We said, 'How do we get this done?'"

Finally, at about 5 p.m. the following day, an updated version was ready to
go. The company released this tweet: "Android users in Venezuela, who
cannot access the app. Please try this version and report back results."

Android users in Venezuela, who cannot access the app. Please try this
version and report back results http://t.co/e5XZKYusOw

-- Zello Inc (@Zello) February 22, 2014

Despite the efforts of the Maduro government, protests in Venezuela are
continuing and so are downloads of Zello, one fueling the other. It's a
cycle that's reminiscent of the very early days of the Arab Spring in 2010
and 2011, in which students and other protestors used social networks like
Twitter and Facebook to help organize, promote and communicate through
protests, eventually forcing the ouster of nondemocratic governments in
places likeTunisia and Egypt.

The lesson from the events in Tunisia in particular seemed to be that when
you combine an educated student class with the power of social networks and
press the return key, the outcome can be democracy. But when the machine
malfunctions, the result can look like a protracted war with the potential
to embroil U.S. forces. The protests in Libya, in contrast, resulted in a
civil war costing more than $1 billion to the U.S. and NATO. When the
machine breaks down completely, the result looks like Syria, or possibly
Iran, where the regime has been extremely successful shutting the
opposition out of the Internet.

To Moore, Venezuela looks like digital trench warfare with governments
working feverishly to outmaneuver software makers and vice versa.

Founded in Austin in 2011, Zello allows individuals to communicate to one
another walkie-talkie style via a simple broadband connection. The app
interface looks a like button on your phone. You press it to speak to
people on a particular channel. The channels can be as small as two people
or as big as hundreds of thousands. The largest in Venezuela is about
450,000, but only 600 can be active on a channel at one time, Moore said.
The feel of the app is similar to the now defunct Nextel push-to-talk
service, which was shut down last summer. Zello is free for individuals but
companies can purchase a plan to allow more users on a single channel for
$10 a month.

[snip]
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Joly MacFie  218 565 9365 Skype:punkcast
WWWhatsup NYC - http://wwwhatsup.com
 http://pinstand.com - http://punkcast.com
 VP (Admin) - ISOC-NY - http://isoc-ny.org
--------------------------------------------------------------
-
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.isoc-ny.org/pipermail/x-pubpol-isoc-ny.org/attachments/20140301/1af2eb1a/attachment-0001.htm>