I think you're probably failing to model the use case for Bitchat.

Location tracking services needn't be enabled in order to use Bluetooth.

Bitchat has numerous use cases:

-camping with others

-hiking with others

-farmer's markets

-sporting events

-concerts

-parties

-meeting someone with whom you've arranged a meeting who you've never met before in person in a public space...this could be used to facilitate private transactions of many types including non-KYC Bitcoin

-general chat in high population density areas

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Yes precise location does need to be enabled to use the mesh even on GrapheneOS.

That's not what I said. I said "Location tracking services needn't be enabled in order to use Bluetooth."

I can put my device in Airplane Mode and still connect via Bluetooth to a speaker.

But the app still has access to every bluetooth mac around you full time and anyone on any device can pin that to a highly probable gps for a data aggregator.

I was talking about the device permissions it asks for. You are either confused or trying to be misleading.

OK, explain how that impacts the use cases of camping or hiking with others?

You're in the middle of nowhere with, presumably, people you trust, and if you're intelligent, you're armed and observant, so what's the issue in those use cases?

Perhaps it is less useful than I suggested if one is trying to pitch a no-hitter, so to speak, in terms of OpSec. To be fair, you overstate your case when you say "anyone can...". A disturbingly huge percentage of people can't even swipe a credit card through a point of sale credit card machine with the correct orientation on their first try. To your point, however, such incompetent people aren't who you're worried about.

"A disturbingly huge percentage of people can't even swipe a credit card through a point of sale credit card machine with the correct orientation on their first try."

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

They don't need to know how to do shit. Their incompetence is the real key. Their phone is probably already constantly uploading gps and every visible Bluetooth mac to half a dozen data brokers because they don't have any opsec. All it takes is walking by something you walked by.

That may be fine in the woods but why keep that app around for that when there are better options that don't have the opsec risk it has?

> You're in the middle of nowhere with, presumably, people you trust, and if you're intelligent, you're armed and observant, so what's the issue in those use cases?

In what case would I pull out my smartphone to speak with people within 100 feet of me though? I've never hiked with people far enough apart that we can't shout to each-other.

Still more private and secure to not have the smartphone on me at all.

Hunting and bird watching come to mind. Yelling to your buddy that there’s a deer heading in the direction of the blind he’s sitting in is probably gonna spook the deer.

There are use cases.

But all of those use cases are better suited for my voice and hearing sense. Bluetooth at crowded locations further shortens the range to the point id have to be within speaking range. If I was at a campground a wifi hotspot mode its probably even better suited (or ad-hoc wifi network on android devices).

Most of these cases make no sense unless your scared to speak with other humans.

I could see like on a college campus, or like a dense apartment building, but even then you'd probably use other apps, or go knock on your neighbor's door if the network is down. That said, even college campus have close circuit networks with redundancy, and we all have cell service. So a lot would have to go wrong, and again to the part where I go knock on the door of my neighbor.

I think I'm simply calling it a novelty and nothing else.