Venezuelans Organize Protests and Avoid State Censorship With Walkie-Talkie App

Like with Arab Spring, protesters in Venezuela and Ukraine owe
their impressive organization to mobile social media apps.
Venezuelan authorities are particularly frustrated with Texas-based
Zello, a simple walkie-talkie app, for emerging as a leading tool
for the opposition. The government even tried to block it.

The peer-to-peer digital messaging app spread like wildfire to
600,000 Venezuelans last week after success in organizing Ukrainian
protests. Business Insider
reports that it has “helped to mobilize marches, evade security
sweeps, and build barricades.”

The push-to-talk method allows users to communicate by pressing
a button and broadcasting to a group. The tool’s openness is a
tremendously popular feature (even if the government can listen
in). Groups can range from two to hundreds of thousands, although
only 600 can access a group at any given time. Additionally,
Business Insider
explains:

Part of the appeal of Zello is the ability of the human
voice to carry so much more information than mere type, allowing
users to give impassioned speeches.

Zello can be used to circumvent state censorship. The app was
popularized during Turkish demonstrations last year to sidestep
state-imposed roadblocks. Similarly, Venezuelan authorities have

suppressed speech in sporadic doses: it blocked picture and
video uploads to Twitter temporarily,
blacked out Internet in the capital city for about 30 hours,
and removed neighboring Columbia NTN24 station from cable. There is
virtually no media coverage of the demonstrations in the state.

The government even
tried to stamp out Zello through the publicly-owned
telecommunications company CANTV. But it hardly left a scratch. The
company re-released a functional version in under 24 hours.

Venezuelans are revolting for a variety of reasons, but
unaccountable government is a major motivation. Ed Krayewski of
Reason
explains, “Maduro acted as if his government had a mandate to
do whatever it wanted, in the name of the people. Enough people
have now had enough intrusive government to push back.”

Social networks like Zello allow repressed citizens to retrieve
information and organize against unpopular measures or corrupt
behavior. The mix of digitally-situated free speech, protests
fueled by repression, and government censorship, seem to constitute
a formula in recent anti-government revolts, a feedback loop that
could inch nations toward transparency and improved governance. The
other day Google executive chairmen Eric Schmidt made a daring
prediction on CBS. Because of the Internet, state censorship “will
be effectively impossible,” he
said. Perhaps “within a decade.”

Read more from Reason.com on Venezuela here.