I mostly use it to make international calls cause sometimes the country my folks are living in shuts down the cellular internet for some reason when major exams/riots are happening and whatsapp stops working.

Imaging telling a whole nation of people they can't use internet on their 500+ dollar phone. The fuck did they buy them for, playing temple run?

[–] cm0002@lemmy.world 34 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Riots I get, but...exams? You're telling me that they'll shutdown the entire countries cellular internet...to stop some students from... cheating?

[–] ChairmanMeow@programming.dev 22 points 1 month ago

Yup, they shut it off for a couple of hours during exams so students won't cheat.

Or at least, won't cheat using the internet.

[–] lud@lemm.ee 15 points 1 month ago (1 children)

South Korea? I heard they are insane when it comes to exams.

[–] Thekingoflorda@lemmy.world 16 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Algeria, Syria, Iraq and Jordan apparently. Source: https://www.thenationalnews.com/news/uae/2024/05/31/exam-cheating-internet-blackout/

[–] guycls@lemmy.world 6 points 1 month ago

India. Small correction, they don't shut it down for entire country, just the state ditricts the exams are happening in.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/28/tech/india-rajasthan-reet-exam-internet-shutdown-intl-hnk/index.html

India still seems to be leading country doing shutdowns though.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/2/28/in-2022-the-world-saw-187-internet-shutdowns-84-by-india-alone

[–] onion@feddit.de 11 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Btw you can suggest them the Briar messenger app. It can send messages via nearby peoples phones if they also have Briar. So if enough people installed it, a city could have it's own messaging network even when the official one is down

[–] guycls@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Nice, I don't think I'll be able to convince the whole city to install it though :-)

[–] onion@feddit.de 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Maybe you could suggest it to people who organize protest

[–] guycls@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Good point.

[–] xilona@lemmy.ml -3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Those "briar clients" still use the "same" internet...

It could work if clients/nodes would exchange data using other channel (lora/bluetooth/etc)

[–] onion@feddit.de 3 points 1 month ago

It could work if clients/nodes would exchange data using other channel

That's exactly what it does

[–] hungryphrog@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 1 month ago

Exams??????