The official ban on TikTok and WeChat by US President Donald Trump apparently led to a massive increase in downloads of the Signal app in China and elsewhere.
Coming with the surge in downloads is the debate it has generated on whether or not decentralized messaging platforms could be the solution to this problem.
Recall that the Trump administration officially announced the ban on the Chinese apps last Thursday with the terms of the ban not stated clearly.
In light of the non-clarity of the ban, all firms were ordered to suspend relations with the apps with a September 20 deadline given to them to exit the United States.
Signal app enjoys massive downloads, what’s next?
Giving the significant reasons why TikTok was banned, the Trump administration explained that the app was suspected to be secretly collecting the personal data of its users.
It also said it was wary of the link the app shared with its parent company, ByteDance, which has ties to China’s government.
The debate on the ban on WeChat has been on for a while now after the US and China exchanged heated words during the core part of the coronavirus pandemic.
While the US government was debating on the ban on WeChat, Signal app enjoyed massive downloads in the Asian country while many experts are looking at the prospect of decentralized messaging platforms.
Even though China made what could be considered a retaliatory move to ban US messaging apps like Facebook and Telegram, Signal app is still enjoying its operations in the country. At the same time, many experts have pointed out that it might not be for a long time.
Decentralized messaging platforms can bypass bans
With the ban on messaging apps, Chinese living, schooling, or working in the country has turned to Signal app to communicate with their families without any hindrance.
Hong Kong dwellers have also reportedly turned to the Signal app after the security law was implemented n mainland China. While the Signal app is currently enjoying its time of fame, experts have warned that any government might decide to shut its operations down shortly while stressing the need for a decentralized messaging app.
Executive of a decentralized app, Brad Kam says his app, which is based on the Ethereum blockchain, will eliminate the scare of a ban.
A word on decentralized messaging platforms
Decentralized platforms are aiming to solve this problem of data ownership. The objective is to gain control of your own data and establish secured and sometimes anonymous access to applications over the internet. Decentralized platforms are nothing new.
Today, the go-to platform for application development is the cloud, thanks to the ubiquitous nature of the public cloud, easy access, and faster time to market. There is nothing wrong with the public cloud or the way we deploy applications and data as far as the enterprise applications are considered.
In most cases, the applications are thoroughly secured, and data is completely protected within the enterprises as the stake in data breach or security vulnerabilities is very high. The adoption of the platform will eventually depend on the popularity of the applications, ease of development, and monetization of the application.
