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Even assuming that's true, surely people in your neighborhood communicate with people outside of it, some of whom have iPhones? That would mean using two differ

Even assuming that's true, surely people in your neighborhood communicate with people outside of it, some of whom have iPhones? That would mean using two different messaging apps, an annoyance that most people won't want to deal with unless the app has some sort of killer feature they can't find anywhere else. Just from a quick look at Briar's site, their main selling point appears to be security, which is a problem when Signal is an established brand with multiplatform support. The local P2P aspect is cool, but seems like it would only appeal to a very niche set of users.

saurik 5y ago
> That would mean using two different messaging apps, an annoyance that most people won't want to deal with... FWIW, most "normal" people I know (as in, not technologists who carry complex opinions about chat protocols and applications in general) seem to just use a ton of messaging apps to communicate with random people for various purposes? They do have a friction with respect to installing one they don't have yet, as it involves work that maybe they can avoid, but everyone seems to have and use and communicate using Facebook, Snapchat, SMS, and at least one account (if not multiple) on each of Instagram and TikTok. (Additionally, people I know who have international contacts -- whether due to being "professionals" or by way of family -- generally have WhatsApp.) It really is only a few techies I know (honestly, including me at times, though for what I think/hope are slightly different reasons: my issues often come down to how critical it is that I can have long-term log retention in useful searchable mechanisms... a big reason I refuse to use Signal as it doesn't even support backup correctly on iOS) who seem to get sad about using multiple apps (which should make sense, as if you know even only two people who are super picky then they probably just fail to communicate with each other at all because they end up in disjoint cliques: your "neighborhood"--which needs to include all your contacts, really, and so quickly knots together with "the world"--isn't going to settle on a single chat app... "normal people" find that level of "sorry: I only use X" stubborn and a-pragmatic ;P).
jeroenhd 5y ago
In my day to day life I use Telegram, WhatsApp, Google Chat, Slack and sometimes Signal. Luckily, I've been able to do away with Messenger, MMS/SMS, Skype, Allo and Hangouts, but I've had those apps installed for ages. I've wrapped most of the clients I use together using Matrix bridges, which keeps the app bloat to a minimum for me. For video calls, I use Google Meet, Teams, Zoom, and, if I have anything to say about it, Jitsi. In a country where everyone has WhatsApp, you're always using multiple apps if your friends don't want to deal with Facebook. iPhone users seem to mostly use WhatsApp here, I'm guessing because iMessage is extremely limited for talking to most people and everyone has WhatsApp anyway, always delivering the full experience. Briar will need to get some foothold on Android before developing for iOS even matters. I know that the US is mostly iPhone centric, but based on the names of the contributors, I'm guessing that's not where most of the development takes place. Lastly, Briar is developed under GPL 3 so it cannot be released on the iOS app store. If all contributors give permission it may be possible for the project to dual license the code especially for an iOS release, but that can be a serious challenge.

saurik 5y ago

> That would mean using two different messaging apps, an annoyance that most people won't want to deal with... FWIW, most "normal" people I know (as in, not technologists who carry complex opinions about chat protocols and applications in general) seem to just use a ton of messaging apps to communicate with random people for various purposes? They do have a friction with respect to installing one they don't have yet, as it involves work that maybe they can avoid, but everyone seems to have and use and communicate using Facebook, Snapchat, SMS, and at least one account (if not multiple) on each of Instagram and TikTok. (Additionally, people I know who have international contacts -- whether due to being "professionals" or by way of family -- generally have WhatsApp.) It really is only a few techies I know (honestly, including me at times, though for what I think/hope are slightly different reasons: my issues often come down to how critical it is that I can have long-term log retention in useful searchable mechanisms... a big reason I refuse to use Signal as it doesn't even support backup correctly on iOS) who seem to get sad about using multiple apps (which should make sense, as if you know even only two people who are super picky then they probably just fail to communicate with each other at all because they end up in disjoint cliques: your "neighborhood"--which needs to include all your contacts, really, and so quickly knots together with "the world"--isn't going to settle on a single chat app... "normal people" find that level of "sorry: I only use X" stubborn and a-pragmatic ;P).

jeroenhd 5y ago

In my day to day life I use Telegram, WhatsApp, Google Chat, Slack and sometimes Signal. Luckily, I've been able to do away with Messenger, MMS/SMS, Skype, Allo and Hangouts, but I've had those apps installed for ages. I've wrapped most of the clients I use together using Matrix bridges, which keeps the app bloat to a minimum for me. For video calls, I use Google Meet, Teams, Zoom, and, if I have anything to say about it, Jitsi. In a country where everyone has WhatsApp, you're always using multiple apps if your friends don't want to deal with Facebook. iPhone users seem to mostly use WhatsApp here, I'm guessing because iMessage is extremely limited for talking to most people and everyone has WhatsApp anyway, always delivering the full experience. Briar will need to get some foothold on Android before developing for iOS even matters. I know that the US is mostly iPhone centric, but based on the names of the contributors, I'm guessing that's not where most of the development takes place. Lastly, Briar is developed under GPL 3 so it cannot be released on the iOS app store. If all contributors give permission it may be possible for the project to dual license the code especially for an iOS release, but that can be a serious challenge.