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Re:Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests by jgilias on Friday August 21, 2020 @12:49PM (#24236554)
It was reported that Telegram was the only thing that somewhat kept working when the internet was down country wide.

Also, I installed Telegram for the explicit purpose of following the events in Belarus directly from sources. By doing that I noticed that apparently the local press in my country have done the same, as it seemed that most of the updates in online media have come from the same Telegram channels. So, it has also served the role of information dissemination beyond the borders of Belarus at a time when journalists working there were harassed and sometimes imprisoned.

Re:Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests by ddorian43 on Friday August 21, 2020 @12:51PM (#24236582)
Uhhh how did it work when the internet went down ?
Re:Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests by jgilias on Friday August 21, 2020 @12:59PM (#24236673)
Yeah, no idea really. It'd be nice to find out from someone more in the know. Was the internet merely heavily deteriorated instead of shut down completely?

I also read that most of the VPNs wouldn't work, with the exception of psiphon.

Re:Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests by detaro on Friday August 21, 2020 @01:39PM (#24237083)
They didn't fully shut down the internet the entire time. I.e. at least for a while, apparently port 80 was still open when other things were blocked.
Re:Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests by JosephHatfield on Friday August 21, 2020 @01:42PM (#24237124)
I believe the Telegram app has a peer-to-peer feature that allows communication to be routed through other devices rather than requiring communication with the Telegram servers
Re:Telegram messaging app proves crucial to Belarus protests by shawnz on Friday August 21, 2020 @02:16PM (#24237426)
That is not the case. It is a plain old client-server architecture.

You might be thinking of FireChat.