How do you communicate when the government censors the internet? With a peer-to-peer mesh broadcasting network that doesn’t use the internet. That’s exactly what Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters have been doing, thanks to San Francisco startup Bridgefy’s Bluetooth-based messaging app. The protesters can communicate with each other — and the public — using no persistent managed network.
This is very similar to how Aether and Scuttlebutt P2P is working over the Internet, and in fact the Manyverse mobile app for Scuttlebutt works in the same way – either over the Internet, Bluetooth or Wifi, and using the other peers it connects to, to pass the messaging on. It really does work and you can work in offline mode and once it connects to a peer it picks up new messages and passes on any messages you have composed.
Which is why as governments are clamping down more and more, more citizens around the world are moving to decentralised and peer-to-peer social networks. I’m seeing a constant uptake with new members joining daily from around the world. Interesting thing is the countries I see most often are Europe, USA, New Zealand and Australia (based on new member welcomes).
See Hong Kong Protestors Using Mesh Messaging App China Can’t Block: Usage Up 3685%
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Mesh networking: how you communicate when China censors the internet.