The platform went down for about an hour on Wednesday after a DDoS attack, in which a server is overloaded with traffic to prevent legitimate users from accessing it. Pavel Durov, Telegram’s founder and CEO, said the attack was “state-actor sized;” he traced to IP addresses in China. The demonstrators have been protesting since Sunday against an extradition law that would let a person arrested in Hong Kong face trial in a different location, including in mainland China; the protestors have said this could let Beijing target any person in Hong Kong at its discretion. (The Next Web, Vox)

Talking point: Technology has played a significant role in this protest, to both the benefit and detriment of the protestors. Telegram, which is encrypted, has helped them coordinate their protests and share the locations of resources, like drinking water and gas masks. But some protestors have stopped using their Octopus cards, which are used to pay for public transit, for fear that the personal information they contain could expose their locations.