Telegram and Signal strongly expand their user base

While Whatsapp has come under fire for promising to share your data with owner Facebook, arguably more secure messaging apps Signal and Telegram have come under fire after the deadly riot on Capitol Hill last week. To date, dozens of people have been arrested on federal charges, with some charged with bringing guns to Capitol Hill. Man are charged with illegal entry or violent entry. Yet it seems that there are some who are more concerned with hiding their identities and avoiding possible legal repercussions. Proof of this could be the fact that the encrypted messaging services Signal and Telegram were the two most downloaded apps in Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store that day. Now banned or at least monitored by social media, pro-Trump fringe groups are now using private messaging services to organize further protests and keep their conversations safe from the prying eyes of authorities. The downside of this development isn't good for Facebook's own messaging service WhatsApp, which is facing a slowdown in growth In the week of January 5-12, Signal recorded 17.8 million app downloads from Apple and Google. That is a 61-fold increase. Telegram saw twice as many downloads in the same week. Whatsapp, on the other hand, saw a drop of around 2 million. The US security authorities are now warning that further "armed protests" are planned in all 50 capitals of the states and the US Capitol in Washington before the inauguration of new President Joe Biden on January 20. And if the speculations are correct, they will be planned via encrypted apps. Encrypted messaging apps are the only beneficiaries of recent developments. Alternative social media like MeWe, CloutHub, and other mainstream social media competitors have seen a surge in new downloads since being banned by President Trump and a handful of ultra-conservative groups. The previously little known social media app MeWe has been downloaded nearly 200,000 times worldwide since last week (and the trend is rising), with the vast majority of these new downloads coming from the United States. Since last week, the app has been ranked 6th on the US App Store's top overall free charts. The use of an alternative means of communication has been an important tool for demonstrators, oppositionists and dissidents around the world for some time. In the US, Occupy Wall Street protesters used social media to spread across the country. Elsewhere, it was a crucial tool for demonstrators in Iran, Hong Kong, Venezuela and Russia. And they eventually toppled governments during the social unrest of the Arab Spring. Aware of this, more repressive governments tried to prevent the use of unsupervised communications. For example, the Zimbabwean government shut down the country's internet for a week in 2019 after violent clashes with the military over fuel price hikes. In 2018, the Iranian government blocked large parts of the internet after weeks of protests over economic hardship and a lack of civil liberties. For a long time Americans followed news from abroad and thought that something like this couldn't happen here. That changed last Wednesday and there are fears about what January 20th could bring. In the meantime, Whatsapp remains the most popular messaging platform, but this status is under threat as privacy issues come to the fore.