The more I think about the need for “freedom tech” in the world — a term I first heard for #[0]​ — the more I think the open internet is simply not something anybody should be taking for granted. Sure, China’s Great Firewall has leaks, and VPNs are a thing. But it’s an insane cat and mouse game, and the risks of detection are very high.

I propose that if we really wanted to have the power of mass organization in civil society to limit the ability of state’s to overreach, then we should really be looking at technologies like BLE to create open mesh protocols to make open communication possible, even in situations where the internet is completely locked down.

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Imagine of Signal or equivalent had a BLE mesh mode for use in extremely adversarial environments. I can totally imagine political opposition leaders and activists using this technology to great effect.

Check LoRaWan and meshtastic client. 20USD off the shelf equipment give you a descentralized mesh network.

Need it standardized and available in every phone.

You can connect to these devices via BLE (and Wi-Fi) and it will extend the mesh by RF signal to the next device and so on. The device will work as gateways and will retransmit what ever message (encrypted) they receive, similar to torrent files. Meshtastic is open source, building the add-ons to connect to other protocols like nostr, lighting, etc. should be no friction at all.