> IANAL, but how are Instagram and WhatsApp allowed to operate in Iran? Do embargoes not apply to online services? That's a pretty good point, actually. > I'd

> IANAL, but how are Instagram and WhatsApp allowed to operate in Iran? Do embargoes not apply to online services? That's a pretty good point, actually. > I'd love to see companies such as Google and Apple implement optional mesh networking as an over-the-air update to their phones in order to help people communicate during times like this. The tech isn't really there yet. It's both a hardware (BT doesn't reach far enough) and a software problem. You don't just "casually" implement a global mesh-based network without a careful and quite explicit system design involving HW and SW in tandem. Nevermind the largest problem: How do you prioritize traffic in a distributed, fair and and scalable way, on nodes that you can't trust, once the mesh network gets really popular?