Block CEO and Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey has announced bitchat, a new experimental peer-to-per messaging app that doesn’t require the internet or even an account to work. Here’s the idea behind it.
Protocols, not platforms
Ever since TechDirt‘s Mike Masnick released his 2019 paper “Protocols, Not Platforms: A Technological Approach to Free Speech,” Jack Dorsey seems to have truly taken it to heart.
That paper led Dorsey to launch the Bluesky project within Twitter (before it was spun out as its own thing), and he’s since become one of the strongest advocates for the idea that open protocols, rather than proprietary platforms, are the key to enabling competition and giving users control over speech and privacy.
After handing the Twitter reins to Parag Agrawal just before the Musk acquisition and the X rebrand, Dorsey joined Bluesky’s board, though he’s since left that too. He also founded Damus, a completely separate decentralized social network.
Still, the protocols idea seems to have stuck and, over the weekend, he unveiled his latest crack at it: bitchat.
bitchat, now in beta, kinda
Top comment by James
Probably not an everyday app, but this will be a great tool for filling a void in oppressive countries, peaceful demonstrations, and venue events.
As soon as Dorsey posted the link to the bitchat TestFlight, the 10,000 available beta slots were gone. But the idea is intriguing, to say the least: a peer-to-peer messaging app that works entirely over Bluetooth mesh networks, no phone numbers, emails, Wi-Fi, or cellular connection required.
Alongside TestFlight, Dorsey also posted links to the project’s GitHub, as well as for what he describe as “an ugly whitepaper describing protocol,” which presents the app as:
“(…) a decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging application that operates over Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) mesh networks. It provides ephemeral, encrypted communication without relying on internet infrastructure, making it resilient to network outages and censorship.”
Whether the idea will stick or go on as a niche project for technically inclined idealists, it’s hard to say. But from the looks of it, Dorsey sure isn’t done trying to protocol-not-platform his way to something as impactful as Twitter.
Are you interested in bitchat? Do you think it can go beyond the announcement hype? Let us know in the comments.
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