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That's already a lot for such a niche project.

Bluetooth chat apps already exist. I used a really shitty looking (but functional) one called Berkanan that I found by searching the App Store for a Bluetooth chat app to talk to friends on ryan air flights where we weren’t sitting together across Europe last year.

Yeah! Me too.

IKR? "Where's your Bitchat?" is a question better never uttered to anyone in person.

Surely this won't have the opposite effect that they're looking for.

Discussed earlier on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036433

Had the same question then read the whitepaper (section 6).

https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/blob/main/WHIT...

And I thought Poob already had it for you.

Too many proper nouns in titles.

And at least one comment references "Curtains for Zoosha"

it's just two recent examples (Gleam on Tangled and now Bitchat on Radicle) and they're both the same format.

[Some well-liked but niche tech] switched their code forge to [a decentralized code forge].

Tbh I'm surprised how many on HN seem unfamiliar with Tangled and Radicle (and Bitchat and Gleam).

It's a basic step to make a plumbis

Works over Bluetooth mesh offline and Nostr online.

Relevant discussion yesterday:

> “Government orders GitHub to remove Bluetooth-based chat app Bitchat: Jack Dorsey”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036433

Yes, it's in the first paragraph of https://bitchat.free/.

It seems like the core dev is behind this: https://x.com/callebtc/status/2080608602432082217

Radicle contributor here.

It's the same project. radicle.dev is for the protocol, radicle.network is for the network explorer.

Note that that radicle.network is a static site that you can also self host: https://radicle.network/nodes/rosa.radicle.network/rad:z4V1s...

I'm pretty sure that's the same project.

I assumed they are the same :-O

One seems to be built on top of the other? Very confusing though, I agree.

“Always connected” meshes don’t scale, but fragmented meshes that use store-and-forward for some data are workable. I’d like to see someone do this with Nostr. The main issue is that you’d have to limit the size of data in transit, so rich media is probably not realistic.

Think FIDO protocol rather than the always-on internet we’re accustomed to.

A mesh of meshes may also be possible in theory.

Mesh networks don't scale beyond a few thousand nodes if the nodes move frequently. Nobody has found a way to make that work. You can push another order of magnitude if you give up on decentralisation.

All social media is censored. If you think yours isnt, you're free to test that hypothesis by posting the N word over and over. I suspect you'll find that you get censored for doing so.

Dorsey's legacy is promoting cryptocurrency. Censorship is part-and-parcel with owning any social media.

I wouldn't worry about people going sweet on him anytime soon.

i have this pet theory that it was inspired by BitchX (they prominently mention being like IRC)

Probably on purpose. Like "Broken, But Whole"

It could be deliberate. Like Wechat's Chinese name is "Weixin", which is a pun on "for sex" in Mandarin (for which its "people nearby" feature originally saw heavy usage). As a decentralized social network, Bitchat might see similar usage.

Yes :)

Find out on expertsexchange.com

Sounds like a suitable addition to the ATProto ecosystem :)

Or a misspelling of bitch hat

BitchX was already taken

Yep.

It depends on whom you’re talking to

Everything is pointing towards a hard "no", but I didn't dig deeper than literally read the first sentence in the README:

> A decentralized peer-to-peer messaging app with dual transport architecture: local Bluetooth mesh networks for offline communication and internet-based Nostr protocol for global reach. No accounts, no phone numbers, no central servers. It's the side-groupchat.

How would it be? Bitchat is for offline communication over Bluetooth Low Energy networks

only if you make it so.