Block CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has introduced bitchat, a brand new experimental peer-to-per messaging app that doesn’t require the web and even an account to work. Right here’s the thought behind it.
Protocols, not platforms
Ever since TechDirt‘s Mike Masnick launched his 2019 paper “Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Strategy to Free Speech,” Jack Dorsey appears to have actually taken it to coronary heart.
That paper led Dorsey to launch the Bluesky mission inside Twitter (earlier than it was spun out as its personal factor), and he’s since grow to be one of many strongest advocates for the concept open protocols, quite than proprietary platforms, are the important thing to enabling competitors and giving customers management over speech and privateness.
After handing the Twitter reins to Parag Agrawal simply earlier than the Musk acquisition and the X rebrand, Dorsey joined Bluesky’s board, although he’s since left that too. He additionally based Damus, a totally separate decentralized social community.
Nonetheless, the protocols concept appears to have caught and, over the weekend, he unveiled his newest crack at it: bitchat.
bitchat, now in beta, kinda
As quickly as Dorsey posted the hyperlink to the bitchat TestFlight, the ten,000 out there beta slots had been gone. However the concept is intriguing, to say the least: a peer-to-peer messaging app that works fully over Bluetooth mesh networks, no cellphone numbers, emails, Wi-Fi, or mobile connection required.
Alongside TestFlight, Dorsey additionally posted hyperlinks to the mission’s GitHub, in addition to for what he describe as “an unpleasant whitepaper describing protocol,” which presents the app as:
“(…) a decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging utility that operates over Bluetooth Low Vitality (BLE) mesh networks. It offers ephemeral, encrypted communication with out counting on web infrastructure, making it resilient to community outages and censorship.”
Whether or not the thought will stick or go on as a distinct segment mission for technically inclined idealists, it’s laborious to say. However from the appears of it, Dorsey positive isn’t completed attempting to protocol-not-platform his option to one thing as impactful as Twitter.
Are you curious about bitchat? Do you suppose it might transcend the announcement hype? Tell us within the feedback.
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