I’ve read all the posts and, as the 'old man of the village', I would suggest taking a look at FidoNet. It was running 40 years ago, for more than a decade, before the internet was available to the average person.

Store-and-forward, hierarchical organization, scheduled transmissions, working over dial-up and radio links, everything is there.

There is nothing new to invent, and it was far more reliable than the 10m real-world range of BT5 (not the 1km claimed for lab devices, which aren't commercial phones).

A BT5 mesh only works under well-defined conditions, which usually coincide with the cases where you don't actually need it.

that is a super good callout.

this is prob the 100th time ive read about bitchat here, and the comments are largely the same (use briarchat, none of these really work that well, i dont like jack dorsey, etc) every time.

but this is interesting. and i agree strongly with this: "While this adds overheads, it's table stakes for real-life usage."

i suppose events like iran are really making me wonder if this stuff is possible it feels like anyone who's under the chokehold of regimes has completely run out of options, but even in America I'm getting the sweats wondering if there's going to be a time where such techs are needed. from what i gather none of these decentralized p2p messengers work well at all, but I also haven't truly tried. I can think of some moments that would've been viable test grounds though. Was at Outsidelands festival in San Fran and cell service was pretty much DOA due to the volume of people trying to hit the same tower(s). Even airtags which everyone in the group had on their beltloop weren't working.

Not just deferred message propagation, but also a way to setup medium to high powered rebroadcasting stations. For political unrest scenarios, you don't always need 2-way communication, but you do need to distribute critical info. A listen-only mode makes it very difficult to track individual users (no RF transmissions), and would cover a large percentage of a critical use case.

All of this is solved with the store-and-forward model that you highlight.

A Lora dongle seems to be better than BT, though potentially incriminating.

What you are talking about is called “store and forward” [1]

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Store_and_forward

Is the issue with this that mobile OSs - iOS in particular are rather aggressive about shutting down apps in the background after a while?

I’ve been tangentially involved in experimenting with Meshtastic and trying to scale it for large events like Burning Man, on the order of 2000–3000 nodes on a single frequency.

Node to node mesh communication is cool and it works surprisingly well at small scale, but the moment we brought high powered repeaters online the difference was night and day. Coverage, reliability, and usability all jumped instantly.

It makes the tradeoff really obvious. Mesh is great for bootstrapping and local traffic, but once you care about real data propagation at scale, centralized infrastructure wins almost every time. Airtime is scarce, coordination matters, and having a small number of well placed high sites beats thousands of mediocre relays.

I still think there’s room for novelty P2P protocols, but mostly as an optimization layer on top of infrastructure, not as the foundation. Every time you push on this problem hard enough, you end up rediscovering the client router model for a reason.

A small USB pluggable module that supports LoRa plus an app using Codec2 or similar low rate codec for voice encoding could fill the gap, although having it bundled with the phone would make it a lot less cumbersome to use. For non phone portable solutions, the LilyGo T-Deck Plus/Pro come to mind, but they're not phones so that would imply a 2nd device to carry around.

> Meanwhile a $10 walkie talkie using primitive stone-age radio technology can go many miles with zero infrastructure, but by law is not allowed to be used for data transmission.

Is this even true?

I still have two Gotennas from before they pivoted to military use cases, and they were legal to use both in the US and in Europe (on different bands auto-configured via GPS, as far as I remember).

REI also currently stocks at least one set of walkie talkies [1] that can relay short messages from smartphones via Bluetooth.

[1] https://www.rei.com/product/240874/motorola-talkabout-t803-2...

It isn't a law thing, but I'm disappointed that LTE Direct didn't go anywhere. That let's cell phone talk to each other over range up a km. The problem is that there LTE Direct requires implementation in the radio firmware, and the companies only did it for government phones. There is also 5G Device-to-Device and I haven't found out if that is supported more widely. There would also need to be frequency allocation, something CBRS (3.5GHz) would work but would be nice to get something with longer range.

You aren't going to get longer ranges with phone, the power and antenna are too limited. Walkie-walkie have bigger antennas (the stubby FRS sort of suck) and more power. Also, walkie-talkie don't have much bandwidth so the data rates would suck.

Will the walkie talkies work if there are hundreds in a small area all transmitting data with each other? Besides, there's just not that much bandwidth there.

Please site the relevant sections of this supposed law you claim exists.

Many WiFi chips can be put into monitor mode (process all the data packets it can detect over the air) and inject packets for transmissions themselves. This pathway is typically unoptimized and would offer poor bandwidth but it is enough for text and audio.

You would need root to do this, and implement your own protocol on top of it with forward error correcting codes.

Personally, the additional complexity and overheads required for a P2P phone network is not worth while and I'm not sure it would fix that many problems that haven't already been fixed with walkie talkies.

A alternative example of this is how Apple doesn't have a way to browse your iPhone's gallery without syncing to their super slow iCloud first.

There is nothing stopping a phone manufacturer from putting a 900 MHz ISM radio in their hardware.

Also, the walkie talkies certainly can legally do data transmission.

HAM radios can transmit data I think. They just can't do encrypted transmissions. (I'm open to correction on this.)

A walkie-talkie requires a big antenna and consume a lot more power than a cellphone.

Check your sources. The law you claim exists… which one is it?

Ham frequencies would work even better?

File this under "lies that someone said on the interwebs."

> Its soaring popularity highlights how decentralised technology can offer a vital communication lifeline during natural disasters. Its soaring popularity demonstrates how decentralised tools can provide a critical communication lifeline when natural disasters knock out traditional infrastructure.

seems like the second article is written by AI

Unfortunately iPhones aren't ubiquitous outside their home market. It would have to be on Android to be really useful in the places this would be really useful, i.e. places where regimes turn off the internet when things go badly for them (current situation in the US notwithstanding). That's not to say iPhones shouldn't have it, I'm all for that.

Idk that there's much of a privacy sell vs. messages being encrypted. In the end users are just trusting Apple to actually be securing messages; they aren't going to love that they are trusting dozens of strangers instead of telecoms. Plus, police etc. already snoop on phones by spoofing cell tower relays anyway.

> Showcasing it's use on a cruise ship, in a packed stadium

Stadiums will still max out the pipe out of the local area, so I suspect it wouldn't help much. Festivals and cruise ships, where you want to reach people who are nearby (and at a festival, you might even have a good idea via gps which peers are better) are in desperate need of this and idk why apple didnt solve it years ago.

The US, and likely Chinese, government(s) have too much potential leverage over Apple. I wouldn't trust that Apple would do this securely, or that the government would allow them to release it.

Wouldn’t that bring the wrath of mobile carriers around the world on their back?

If there is a decentralised system that doesn’t require infrastructure , what is left to monetise?

Seems extremely niche for a keynote but a lot of the Apple Watch Ultra features seem niche too. Who knows, I guess it could happen.

I doubt the equities analysts would appreciate this as much as a tech nerd would. It'd be seen as a step backwards and evidence of having no clue which way the world is heading.

This has absolutely nothing to do with privacy.

Then Google can copy it with a series of a dozen product launches and closures over the next decade.

Google BT Chat. Android B Chat. Google Relay.

And Microsoft can get on board, too. With Microsoft Teams Decentralised For School and Work.

If you don't like a thing and share that dislike, care to elaborate your reasoning so others can profit from it?

There’s no app for Apple platforms making it a lot less useful.

I personally don't care if its bitchat or briar, I care about the most effective proven implementation in the end. Such a technology is needed now, not later, and if if bitchat started out as dorseys vibe coded side project last year and has now grown into something greater, then so be it.

Also why reinventing the wheel? There is already Briar.

There's also Berty https://berty.tech/features/

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I agree, enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. The mere presence of a potentially-cancellable person poisons the entire tech stach, regardless of any other merits. If I were to use such technology I would risk becoming morally tainted by JD's potential-objectionableness, a social risk I am entirely unwilling to take. I simply cannot endorse such technology that is not fully sanctioned by the High Table of Moral Certification & Transactional Stamp Duty. I must therefore distance myself from any such endorsements and withdraw my support regardless of whatever so-called "technological" merits such technology may claim.

Please view my participation in this discussion as certified proof of the objective verification of my moral essence. I hereby claim superiority now and forever over JD and any such users of said technologies. Sincerely and respectfully (without any possible hints of objectionableness), the undersigned.

Bluetooth 5 introduced "coded PHY", which allows ranges of over 1 km in ideal conditions. As I understand it, adding support for this wouldn't even require new hardware for most recent phones.

The real obstacles here are political, not technical, as evidenced by the complete absence of any built-in solution that could be so useful in both everyday life (messaging a family member on the same plane when sitting separately, national park trips etc.) and emergencies.

We literally got smartphone-to-satellite comms now, but we're lacking the most barebones peer-to-peer functionality.

One of these bluetooth messaging app was made by a developer who was on a cruise ship with family, and the Internet over satellite costs an arm and leg. So he wrote an app to communicate with his families over bluetooth.

Also why would one want to have the data go over some servers thousands miles away when the device is right next to you? Seems like bluetooth is the perfect way to communicate for devices that are close to each other.

Any situation when mobile internet cannot be used. That is not only protests, but also legal gatherings, i.e. street concerts, or places where mobile coverage is poor in general.

Back in the 2010s I used the 'Notes' applications to send messages via Bluetooth on my Sony Ericsson to chat with a girl in the next bunk.

There was no signal in the remote Irish hostel so it was the perfect way to send messages covertly in the dormitory.

Fun night!

In Iran right now... Internet shut down while the regime keeps slaughtering people at the order of 4x9/11.

Consider if you live in Gaza. Israel has destroyed all the telecoms equipment across the Gaza strip (and everything else). You were ordered to leave your home by Israeli soldiers, but now the school you're sheltering in is being bombed. You may need to leave, but you believe there may be sniper drones outside.

- You want to check in with people around you about what to do - You want to check on the health of your family, from whom you were separated

This particular one supports mesh, so the range could be way way higher.

In theory if as many people use bitchat as used whatsapp somewhere like central london, everyone actually could communicate in a fully decentralised manner - you're frequently in bluetooth range of other people's phones just walking around or even sat in your house.

Would that actually happen? No, but it's an interesting thought experiment

I see two use cases: * Communication between protestors * Illegal activities, but here I can imagine that bluetooth range is too small

Asking "what good is this?" in a dismissive tone should be against the rules in a space like Hacker News.

When your Ayatollah decides to shut down internet and you are near people you don't really know in an urban environment?

I've wanted something like this numerous times for long flights.

I also have recently got into caving, which usually results in 5-50 people camping over weekends in rural Kentucky. No signal most of the time.

I have seen a test of bitchat using radio communication over a distance of more than 5 km. There were also other methods to extend BT range.

I was at a music festival last summer, and the phone network was completely down. I could use BitChat to find my mates.

Now that Wi-Fi Aware is supported on iOS, I think supporting it should significantly expand the transmission range.

Can PWAs run (and interact with Bluetooth) in the background? Edit: no they can't, so PWA would be not very useful at this.

It's simpler than that. The only thing that would need to change is spectrum allocation. We need unlicensed spectrum with higher power limits in longer range radio bands. It's a miracle what radio engineers have done with a tiny slice of unlicensed spectrum near 2.4 Ghz. Imagine what they could do with a few unlicensed lower frequency VHF/UHF channels.

I think "wired" (really bundles of optical fiber) will win out anyway due to the vast capacities it can provide. There will always be gaps between populations and to have a reliable link, you will need these dedicated mainlines, which will also help scale datacenters. Perhaps we would have more p2p tools, but the public internet would have a similar topology too if it were to have a similar capacity.

Not sure about bitchat, but Briar is being used in Iran right now. https://byteiota.com/briar-offline-mesh-when-internet-shutdo...

Tbf, if my government would be out to kill me for protesting, I'd use something that at least was security audited. Not to shit on bitchat, I haven't audited the code personally.

Living under the rock of meaningless political theater is not great [1]

[1] Washington’s War on Iran: The Importance of Defending Information Space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiJm4zwZZHY

Unfortunately most P2P wireless solutions are likely to be somewhat buggy, at least in my experience. WiFi and Bluetooth chipsets are often "quirky". I will often lose the ability to ssh into my laptop across WiFi until I go to the laptop and poke the network from it. KDEConnect often temporarily loses sight of my phone, yet it still reports being connected to WiFi. Stuff like that.

Meshtastic has a reliability problem. We often cannot get beyond one hop - and our network isn't too loose nor too dense (60 stations).

Cross test with Meshcore doesn't show any issues. Chats over 5 hops have almost a 100% success rate.

Long time I avoided MC because of its closed source client - but a Opensource Flutter app for Apple/iPhone is slowly getting usable and stable. (https://github.com/zjs81/meshcore-open)

My fantasy is a P2P network that people can use from their everyday devices. The internet is becoming far too controlled, we need an alternative that is harder to monitor and censor.

Now I cannot unsee it...

A bit unfortunate naming, indeed.

OMG you're right. I cannot unsee..

I remember distinctly that the developers said they were working on a next generation version of it and it just never happened.

I think they just ran out of funding and died with a whimper.

The regime in Iran has so much to hide it's unlikely that they will enable unsupervised international communication ever again. Other countries don't seem ready to do anything about it.

What else would they use? This is for when your government has turned off all sensible networks.

Funny, but I think you're missing the point here.

This is not meant to be an efficient, every day messaging platform.

It's for people who are afraid of the government turning off the internet/cell network (kinda justified if you live in Iran or Uganda), or those networks going offline due to natural disasters (see Jamaica)

but for that to work, you need to attach an antenna, no? and where do i get such an FM transmitter? AND android does not support it in the software level, and there's no protocol for the waves?

I think he’s just a guy who got a lot of money who can pay people to implement his sometimes weird, sometimes useful, often ill-conceived obsession with decentralization and a very lame version of “freedom”.

Like, he quit BlueSky because he wanted it to be completely unmoderated which is, frankly, asinine. His view of what “censorship” means exists in a world along with spherical cows and no bad actors.

Bluetooth works most reliably across all devices (within its limited range), but all these p2p apps are indeed moving towards multi-transport support to diversify and widen the connectivity grid: https://hackmd.io/@grjte/bitchat-wifi-aware

Same in Iceland, but even when traveling across the world, I never see anyone when trying it.

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Oh man, I remember these. A modern version would be pretty cool.

> wish I had fuck-you money and could spend my day engrossed in whatever I find interesting

A good mental exercise is to calculate how much you'd need to survive indefinitely in a pocket of rural America or the third world. No international travel. No bells and whistles. Limited cuisine. But survival and leisure unlimited.

When I've run the numbers for a comforable living, they've come to $300k (Vietnam, $12k/y) to $500k (West Virginia or Portugal $18k/y). But one could halve (or more) those figures by accepting standards of living our grandparents would have found adequate.

Then you make a choice. That world. Or the one you have. (Or something in between.)

Two-fifths of American households have a net worth over $300,000; more than half over $150,000 [1]. That means somewhere between a lot of and potentially most Americans have, on a global scale, fuck-you money. Just not fuck-you money to retain their status at the centre of the first world.

[1] https://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentiles/