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Bitchat is now on Radicle
- pioneerjeff 3mo agoAre there any special features comparing with other decentrilized message product? Such as Nostr or XMTP？
- ckcheng 3mo agoWorks 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49036433
- KennyBlanken 3mo agoWhat a bunch of clickbaity nonsense. Indian government*. They shut off internet access and order people to remove stuff all the time. Nobody pays any attention to them. It's still up on Github. https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat
- trollbridge 3mo agoIndia governs more people than anyone else in the world. So, “government” defaulting to “Indian government” is pretty sane. And relevant.
- subscribed 3mo agoYes, it's in the first paragraph of https://bitchat.free/ https://bitchat.free/.
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- zenethian 3mo agoIs this bit-chat or bitch-at?
- HumblyTossed 3mo agoYep.
- tamimio 3mo agoIt depends on whom you’re talking to
- inigyou 3mo ago> It depends on whom you're bitching at FTFY
- subscribed 3mo agoYes :)
- embedding-shape 3mo agoSounds like a suitable addition to the ATProto ecosystem :)
- culi 3mo agoIt's explicitly in opposition to ATProto. That's probably why they went with Radicle and not Tangled
- tdkx21 3mo agoIt's worth noting the distinction between the auth layer and the data layer here. Tangled uses ATProto primarily for authentication, but it departs from the standard PDS model by offloading Git storage to knots. While that's a clever hybrid, Bitchat is aiming for a truly serverless, local-first experience (especially with the Bluetooth mesh aspect). Radicle’s gossip-based P2P stack mirrors that vision more closely. In this case, Radicle isn't "better" in a vacuum—it's just the right tool for a project that wants to eliminate mediating servers entirely.
- orliesaurus 3mo agoIs this irc compatible?
- jbverschoor 3mo ago[flagged]
- embedding-shape 3mo agoEverything 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.
- culi 3mo agoHow would it be? Bitchat is for offline communication over Bluetooth Low Energy networks
- inigyou 3mo agoonly if you make it so.
- m4rtink 3mo agoDefinitely! Just send a message to a given topic, it gets distributed through the mesh & users either get it or not (they are not in the mesh at the time). Just like IRC.
- ck2 3mo agobtw what's the current state of mesh wifi? seems like after November or January 2029 might need it since administration now has a kill-switch so why wouldn't they use it
- inigyou 3mo agoMesh 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.
- iamnothere 3mo ago“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.
- ck2 3mo agoah doesn't ham-radio packet system do something like that, I only vaguely remember but someone would have to build it into a major 3rd party firmware like openwrt to get wide adoption
- tancop 3mo agothe other way is using a hybrid mesh/tree system where volunteers or paid services transfer non local traffic over static links. aka the internet we have now but with a fallback layer.
- imtringued 3mo agoI hope they will enjoy fighting with https://radicle.dev/ https://radicle.dev/ over the project name.
- lostmsu 3mo agoOne seems to be built on top of the other? Very confusing though, I agree.
- IshKebab 3mo agoI think radicle.dev is the software that lets you store issues and PRs inside a Git repo, and radicle.network is some kind of interface to people's hosts that run the Radicle software. Something like that? I agree it's super confusing though and their explanation isn't exactly clear: https://radicle.network/principles https://radicle.network/principles
- behindsight 3mo agothe main reason they mentioned [1] for radicle.network is because their old domain radicle.xyz was blocked in some places by some lists that they think was because it may have hosted certain UGC that triggered some flags. > Content about Radicle (explainers, guides, download links, blog posts) which is under control of the Radicle team. We will use radicle.dev for these purposes. > Content on Radicle (repositories hosted on practically any node on the network) which the Radicle team has only very little control over, accessible via Radicle Explorer. Going forward, our deployment of Radicle Explorer will not be hosted on app.radicle.xyz anymore, but instead it will be hosted at radicle.network. > The idea is of course that if there are complaints about or issues with radicle.network in the future, we hope that radicle.dev stays largely unaffected and people can continue to inform themselves about Radicle and learn how to set it up. On a semi-related note, this is a good time to remind anyone that hasn't yet heard of the Public Suffix List (PSL) [2][3] to make sure you put your domains that may be hosting UGC in the form <usercontent>.<yourdomain>.<tld> (ie: eTLDs) on that list so browsers and other block lists are aware that the user provisioned subdomains are UGC and not from your site so it properly isolates cookies/site grouping and won't flag your entire domain as malicious. 1: https://radicle.dev/2026/04/23/domain-move https://radicle.dev/2026/04/23/domain-move 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Suffix_List https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Suffix_List 3: https://github.com/publicsuffix/list https://github.com/publicsuffix/list
- VCFundedGenYer 3mo agoSuch a terrible name. Can't believe marketing didn't catch it.
- culi 3mo agoProbably on purpose. Like "Broken, But Whole"
- logicchains 3mo agoIt 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.
- subscribed 3mo agoMaybe. I have bitchat installed and on in the rather large city. I have yet to see another person on :)
- logicchains 3mo agoIt's only a matter of time until it or something like it catches on as a replacement for Telegram's "People/Groups Nearby" feature that France forced it to remove.
- johanyc 3mo ago
- dmix 3mo agoThat Radicle site design is an interesting take for a git repo platform. Good use of full width spacing, well thought out navigation, nice code rendering. I dig it.
- blisstonia 3mo agoYeah! Me too.
- inigyou 3mo agoI wonder if it's possible to make something like this that lets you plug in an arbitrary git repo URL
- QuantumNomad_ 3mo agoInstall Radicle on a VPS, and create a script that clones a git repo and that then makes it available on Radicle. Then use the radicle.network site to browse that repo. For example.
- guess_who_is_it 3mo agojack promoted censorship when he was in twitter, now he is playing the saint card.
- bigyabai 3mo agoDorsey'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.
- inigyou 3mo agoAll 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.
- vitalyan8184 3mo ago[dead]
- bigyabai 3mo ago> the other side, on the other hand, was subject to "private platforms can do whatever the fuck they want" kind of moderation taps the sign No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider. That's how it worked in the Twitter days, it's still how it works in the X days, too. If that offends you, then you should personally lobby to powerful giants like Elon Musk to take accountability for all speech on his platform. He'll love the idea of weekly class-action lawsuits and the unavoidable forfeiture of his RSUs.
- driverdan 3mo agoModeration is a requirement of any platform that has user generated content. Without it they will turn to wasteland of spam and hate.
- xyzsparetimexyz 3mo agoYo where's my
- baron3dl 3mo agoBitchat is an AOS (https://andotherstuff.org/#foundry-projects https://andotherstuff.org/#foundry-projects) project. Surprised, they didn't rehost it on ngit (https://gitworkshop.dev/ https://gitworkshop.dev/), which is also an AOS project.
- cykros 3mo agoI'm sort of surprised it's not mirrored there, but not surprised that it's main hosting isn't there. It sort of works best if people find it. Nostr purity spirals have a great way of resulting in 5 people ever seeing what you're publishing. I love the protocol but when trying to get people using it you sort of need to put apps where they are.
- Cider9986 3mo agoPeople interested in BitChat should download it just so you have it in case it gets popular or you find someone to use it with. I tested it and it's surreal to text without WiFi or cellular.
- allthetime 3mo agoBluetooth 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.
- gritzko 3mo agoI think FireChat was the first one, in 2011.
- freehorse 3mo agoI remember when sending messages and files through IR was a standard default feature in (dump) phones two decades ago. It is a bit sad how technology in some ways regresses when certain anti-incentives apply.
- miki123211 3mo agoBitchat and IRDA solve very different problems. IRDA is 1-to-1 and basically requires both users to do nothing else but use IRDA (including being within line-of-sight of each other). For a use case like talking to a family member a few seats over on a plane, IRDA won't help you. Bitchat, at least in principle, doesn't require you to sacrifice the entirety of your phone to constantly run Bitchat in the foreground, and can work over larger distances (and with a mesh architecture which lets you reach people that you wouldn't normally be able to reach). Writing an app that has the equivalent of 2000s-era functionality is a day of work at most. You don't even need to, you can achieve similar objectives via Airdrop / hotspot names (the latter being used as a loophole to communicate across prison cells). This is not what Bitchat is.
- thisisnotauser 3mo agoI love these posts, every week it's "Gloop is now on Ploof!"
- TaupeRanger 3mo agoAnd at least one comment references "Curtains for Zoosha"
- fooker 3mo agoIt's a basic step to make a plumbis
- culi 3mo agoit'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).
- culi 3mo agoHere's some less popular posts in the past year that people didn't make Poob jokes about: * Gemini is now on Mac * OpenClaw is now on Android * Instapaper is now on Kobo * Gitzy is now on Testflight * Webpack is now on Bluesky https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=true&query=%22is%20now%20on%22&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=pastYear&page=0&prefix=tru...
- plebian 3mo agoIf they care so much about availability maybe they should reconsider including libs.gms.location and be available on F-Droid (https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/24907#note_2704652160 https://gitlab.com/fdroid/fdroiddata/-/merge_requests/24907#...)
- blks 3mo agoLooks like the repo maintainer just stopped reviewing any PRs or replying to messages. If some wants this to proceed they should probably fork it
- deleted 3mo ago[deleted]
- qwertyastronaut 3mo agoI can’t wait until Goblin is acquired by Nematode. Then finally they might make Gorbachev open source.
- xyst 3mo agoIn theory, this could work. Setup machine with bluetooth receiver. Funnel packets from Bluetooth receiver over a virtual private network (ie, wireguard, tailscale, netbird). Then in another state/country/continent with server connected to vpn then rebroadcasts those packets over BLE. A mesh network overlayed on top of another mesh network.
- momentmaker 3mo agoFor some context, it seems like the Indian government wants Bitchat to be taken down. https://xcancel.com/jack/status/2080565084586135773 https://xcancel.com/jack/status/2080565084586135773
- illithid0 3mo agoSurely this won't have the opposite effect that they're looking for.
- nfbdhdfbf 3mo agoIt definitely won’t. People love pointing out the Streisand effect as though we’re still in the same social media dynamic that we were 30 or 15 years ago. Wake the fuck up. Banning the app is 100% certainly going to reduce it all’s usage. The fact that you somehow think you could have the opposite effect is a sign that your head is buried so deep in the sand and you have no idea what the current state of the world is. The authoritarians are winning and their censorship and propaganda has been exceptionally effective. Clinging to idealistic slogans and denying reality is a great way to accomplish nothing
- qphe95 3mo agoWell banning it pushed it to Radicle and now people are moving to GitHub alternatives so I think the Streisand effect worked.
- mastax 3mo agoDid banning it cause it to get adopted even faster in India than it otherwise would have? That seems like the salient point to me for the Indian government’s calculus. I don’t have a particularly good feel for Indian society but my prior is that this kind of official friction puts a pretty low hard cap on how popular an app can get. If the realistic ambition was only ever to reach a small circle of activists and nerds then sure, this event probably helped the app reach those people faster.
- TranquilMarmot 3mo ago> Messages route through nearby devices (max 7 hops) How far, realistically, could this reach using just iOS and Android devices? If each device can reach ~100m, that means you could theoretically reach somebody 700m (2.3k feet) away? Or would it be further if two devices are at the edge of their radio range?
- mkayokay 3mo agoHad the same question then read the whitepaper (section 6). https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/blob/main/WHITEPAPER.md https://github.com/permissionlesstech/bitchat/blob/main/WHIT...
- Qision 3mo agoIs it Jack Dorsey who moved the repo or someone else?
- 2color 3mo agoIt seems like the core dev is behind this: https://x.com/callebtc/status/2080608602432082217 https://x.com/callebtc/status/2080608602432082217
- inigyou 3mo agoWalked around Fusion Festival with Bitchat running. Saw about 20 other devices and a few messages. Nobody replied to my messages. So usage isn't zero, but 20 devices out of 80000 people isn't a lot. Most hops I saw was 2, meaning there wasn't enough density to make it any meaningful distance across the festival grounds.
- Qision 3mo agoThat's already a lot for such a niche project.
- NeOchenHorosho 3mo agoAs far as I'm concerned, it was used at several protest and is currently in use in Indian CJP protests. Also Indian government made a request to take down it's repo on GitHub
- voakbasda 3mo agoThere is no bigger measure of success for a privacy project than getting a freedom hating government to request a takedown.
- trueno 3mo agobut it works?? thats actually kinda neat? i tried bringing airtags to a festival with 30k people so our group could find each other and they just shit the bed and didnt work
- mariebks 3mo ago
- RobRivera 3mo agoThat name Tobias Bluth vibes
- bad_username 3mo agoIKR? "Where's your Bitchat?" is a question better never uttered to anyone in person.
- inigyou 3mo agoI will make sure to ask everyone this the next time I visit a decentralisation workshop
- Mistletoe 3mo agoThis is the cyberpunk future I was hoping we would get…and we got something completely different, some kind of centralized corpo dystopia. I’ve installed it!
- alwinaugustin 3mo agoThis is after Indian government asked Github to remove Bitchat within three hours after notice .
- taylodl 3mo agoI first parsed this as Bitch At
- mwenge 3mo agoFlubber is now on Bloopy.
- btcrh 3mo ago[dead]
- Daunk 3mo agoI downloaded the Radicle desktop client yesterday, entered my new username and password and... nothing happened. Tried restarting the app and do it again, but I never got past the account creation/login screen. So my Radicle adventure ended there.
- 2color 3mo agoTry the getting started guide: https://radicle.network/guides/getting-started https://radicle.network/guides/getting-started Radicle uses a key for your identity. There is no username. You can self-assign an alias for a more human recognisable name.
- ekjhgkejhgk 3mo agoHow is this supposed to actually work? I'm at home, there's no bluetooth device in range, can I not send a message?