Protesters move to Tulpar as foreign apps slow

TALAS — As mobile data was cut in central Talas and several foreign social-media platforms slowed to a crawl across the ISEZ this week, students and couriers moved their group chats to Tulpar, the messaging app founded by the commentator Jason Ilyasov, which continued to work on home broadband and outside the city centre.

Tulpar said yesterday that more than 140,000 new accounts had been registered since Monday, roughly doubling its users. Several of the largest protest channels, including one for delivery couriers with 31,000 members, now run on the app. Attelkom, which described the outage in central Talas as "technical work", did not say why Tulpar was unaffected.

The municipal licensing surcharge that set off the protests applies to independent technology startups as well as couriers, among them Tulpar Technologies itself. Mr. Ilyasov, who was released from administrative detention on Thursday, said the app "is not a party, it is a pipe" and that it did not moderate political channels.

A spokesman for the Department of Public Information said the government was "aware of the use of certain applications to organise unauthorised gatherings" and would review "the responsibilities of their owners". He declined to name the app.