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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies during a distant video proceeding held by subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee connected "Social Media's Role successful Promoting Extremism and Misinformation" successful Washington, March 25, 2021.
CNBC
Block CEO Jack Dorsey spent the play gathering Bitchat, a caller decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging app that works wholly implicit Bluetooth mesh networks, with nary internet, cardinal servers, telephone numbers oregon emails required.
The Twitter co-founder announced Sunday that the beta mentation is unrecorded connected TestFlight, with a afloat achromatic insubstantial disposable connected GitHub.
In a post connected X Sunday Dorsey called it a idiosyncratic experimentation successful "bluetooth mesh networks, relays and store and guardant models, connection encryption models, and a fewer different things."
Bitchat enables ephemeral, encrypted connection betwixt adjacent devices. As users determination done carnal space, their phones signifier section Bluetooth clusters and walk messages from instrumentality to device, allowing them to scope peers beyond modular scope — adjacent without WiFi oregon compartment service.
Certain "bridge" devices link overlapping clusters, expanding the mesh crossed greater distances. Messages are stored lone on-device, vanish by default, and ne'er interaction centralized infrastructure — echoing Dorsey's long-running propulsion for privacy-preserving, censorship-resistant communication.
The motorboat builds connected his support of Damus and Bluesky and reflects a broader propulsion to decentralize everything from societal media to payments.
Like the Bluetooth-based apps utilized during Hong Kong's 2019 protests, Bitchat is designed to support moving adjacent erstwhile the net is blocked, offering a censorship-resistant mode to enactment connected during outages, shutdowns, oregon surveillance.
The app besides supports optional radical chats, oregon "rooms," which tin beryllium named with hashtags and protected by passwords. It includes store-and-forward functionality to present messages to users who are temporarily offline.
A aboriginal update volition adhd WiFi Direct to summation velocity and range, pushing Dorsey's imaginativeness for off-grid, user-owned connection adjacent further.
Unlike mainstream messaging platforms similar Meta's WhatsApp and Messenger, which are owned and built by large tech companies and trust connected idiosyncratic data, Bitchat operates wholly peer-to-peer with nary accounts, nary identifiers, and nary information collection.
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