Jack Dorsey’s Bluetooth messaging app surged during India’s internet blackout — and the government’s response suggests a new tech battleground.

Governments that deploy internet shutdowns to thwart protesters have struggled to clamp down on offline messaging apps. India’s recent response to Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat suggests that battle is entering a new phase.

Bitchat, launched by the Twitter co-founder in 2025, allows nearby phones to communicate over Bluetooth even when mobile networks or internet access are unavailable. Last month, the app had its biggest real-world test after authorities shut down internet access during student protests in New Delhi.

As protesters turned to Bitchat, the Indian government tried to block access to the app’s source code on GitHub, a Microsoft-owned platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. In the past, the Indian government has blocked apps from official app stores due to various reasons, but digital rights advocates say this appears to be the first known attempt to geoblock an open-source software repository.

The episode highlights a growing challenge for governments.

    • Taasz/Woof@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      16·
      1 天前

      Meshtastic (and Meshcore) use LoRa radios so require extra hardware, but as a result have much longer range than Bluetooth.

      • mesa@piefed.socialEnglish
        20·
        1 天前

        As someone that has used both for years:

        • meshtastic - great at imprompu connections. Camping, big events, ect. Like within 5 milesish.
        • meshcore - great at consistant communication with known nodes. Think your house, office, or established areas. Getting messages out of your local city is possible.

        Its fun as a hobby.

        !meshtastic@mander.xyz

    • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
      5·
      1 天前

      I want to like it, but

      • the learning curve
      • the extra hardware requirements
      • the state of the software ecosystem
      • the (lack of) reliability in my experience
      • schisms with even choosing how to communicate

      all make it feel to me like a project for comfortable hobbyists at hackathons, not a serious protest communication tool.

      • i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        2·
        24 小时前

        It would be nice if these mesh projects worked together. There are at least three major incompatible LoRa mesh ecosystems. I think only Reticulum has both LoRa and Bluetooth, but Reticulum is possibly the least mature, and it’s even more obscure than Meshtastic. A few phones with Reticulum over LoRa could relay messages from Reticulum over Bluetooth phones over a longer distance, and potentially reach the internet from some distant location.

        Columba looks like the app you’d want. I’ve never used it.

        • XLE@piefed.socialEnglish
          1·
          7 小时前

          Thank you so much for the Columba recommendation! I played around with it enough to connect two devices over Bluetooth LE, and I assume if I had the extra hardware, I’d be able to use a LoRa radio with it too (looks like the option to flash it is simply built into the app).

          I might need to look into the privacy implications of turning on a Bluetooth radio at a local event when a lot of recommendations say you should leave your phone at home, but this at least seems promising if somebody had a second device specifically for these things.