FireChat was a tool for revolution, then disappeared

Android only? Ugh

I think a combination of LoRa, bluetooth, and WiFi might be the alternative. I've seen videos of LoRA functioning below the noise floor (perfect for evading RF triangulation), and at 200km (perfect for reaching past physical borders). The major weakness is line of sight (and availability), but bluetooth and WiFi can help there.

It looks like this allows short range communication, but doesn't set up a meshnet. So wouldn't be great for anything more than a couple hundred feet.

Beyond that though, at this point for protests (in the US at least), the suggested opsec is to leave your phone at home.

Briar is awesome. Ive used it to talk to my wife when we are seated away from each other in planes or trains and cant get up, via bluetooth due to lack of service, wifi, or because of airplane mode.

In theory maybe, but I have never gotten Briar to work in practice without Internet.

TIL Briar does "offline messaging". This is news to me, though I've never used it.

That said, I am curious to hear more about the offline messaging. If it only is able to exchange when the two people who are trying to communicate with eachother are directly nearby it isn't so much a mesh network, right? A mesh network would be able to route across other nodes to get to its destination. Does Briar do that? The "How it works" page doesn't really seem to answer much, so I am assuming not.

I think the obvious question is: can you shed any light or provide context on why the service was shut down?

And if not, it seems unrealistic to expect people to adopt / trust your alternative.

Well now we can put the speculation to rest, exactly how many CIA agents visited to shut down your radical operation??

Is it open source? Will it one day mysteriously disappear from the internet too?

I downloaded your app just now from App Store.

When I get to the phone number step, it briefly shows a captcha screen but then transitions to the phone number screen.

When I enter my phone number. Country code +47. I don’t get any sms at all.

When I switch to the sms app to see if an sms arrived (it didn’t), and I switch back to your app, the counter on the screen that is counting down to allow resending code resets to 00:59 although it was at like 00:30 when I switched away from the app.

When after waiting for another full minute and occasionally touching the screen to prevent it from locking I am presented with the following options when clicking “I didn’t get a code”:

- Contact NewNode Support

- Resend code

- Call me instead

- Cancel

I tried resend code. No code arrives still.

Great, now I have to wait another full minute with your app in focus before I can try another option.

After waiting another full minute, I click “call me instead”. No call comes.

Is the new product funded by In-q-tel as well?

I'm just curious, why not build ontop of another app like Signal?[0] My understanding is that there's nothing stopping anyone from using the same app and creating their own server and nodes. My understanding is that you can even hook into multiple nodes with a custom fork of the app. Wouldn't this give a big advantage of not requiring people to have a whole new app and you can work synergistically with a company with similar/compatable goals?

The thing I see is that if you really want to make a huge P2P network, you need a reason to have the app installed for reasons other than P2P. The problem I've always seen with FireChat was that I'd never get anyone to talk to me and then when there was an emergency no one would be able to download. So we need to have the features built into something with more normal day-to-day utility.

[0] https://community.signalusers.org/t/signal-airdrop/37402

Hey there thank you for taking the time to respond. I have a few questions:

The sign up process is surprisingly difficult and doesn't appear to be working.

The CAPTCHA is VERY thorough. I couldn't seem to get it to agree that I was human. When I finally solved it, the submit button is hidden (you have to scroll for some reason).

When I enter my phone number it prompts me to enter a code that never arrived. When I click "I didn't receive a code" the app sends me back to the CAPTCHA (lol). I complete the captcha again and request the code.

I went through this process three or four times before I gave up. This seems like an ongoing issue[1]

Does the app have many users? Any users?

The last blog post on the NewNode site was July of last year.

According to the App Store there has been three minor updates- 3, 9 and 12 months ago. No notes on the updates.

Does NewNode have a road map?

I couldn't find any write ups about the app anywhere. No press coverage.

So, why did FireChat close down?

Edit: I just completed 10 CAPTCHAs in a row.

[1] https://x.com/zyz09061682717/status/1711515687095525515

Can you go into any additional detail about why firechat shut down?

It requires phone number for registration. Site explain this as it is unique and hard to obtain en masse.

But it is not so. Phone numbers are controlled effectively by governments if needed, they are re-used, and they cheap-dirt in some countries (like, I could get SIM card in Serbia or Laos for about 1 Euro on the street).

About re-use: When I get new number in Serbia Is tarted to get a lot of SMSes and later WhatsApp messages about my debts, from very aggressive people. It was not scam, but this number only 3 months before that was used by some local guy who got into big troubles with loan sharks. They were Ok when I explained that I'm expat with SIM card bought in the newspaper stand, but I needed to explain it something like 50 times!

Sorry, but phone number is BAD ID and SMS is TERRIBLE 2FA / confirmation media.

"just know who to trust".

a super power I wish I had.

A antifa relative does not carry their phone with them when they meet, nor do they carry it in their person when attending a rally - they have a friend/lawyer name/number written in a paper with them, just in case some one has to be contacted.

At rallies, masked, sun glasses, baseball hat and a couple of shirts

Revolutionaries definitely had problems with surveillance and infiltration before electronics.

Everything is trade-offs. Meeting in person is great, until you're in the middle of a protest and everyone has to scatter because the police are firing tear gas at your skull. At that point, you rather do need to either have had a plan, or you need some way to communicate that isn't face-to-face.

Not having any communications at all puts you at a massive disadvantage when opposing people who do. Absolutely no revolutions were ever accomplished by improvisational means.

haha the best reply on the Internet

It was quite remarkable how Jan 6 proceeded entirely in the open with people posting selfies of themselves saying "off to overthrow the government today!", but because that kind of thing is entirely normalized from rightwing sources it wasn't important until those arrested eventually made it to court.

Stochastic terror and the stochastic coup work great precisely because there are no clear unambiguous two-way communication trails between the instigator and the accomplices; just a lot of "wouldn't it be great if somebody did something". Fell apart afterwards because there was no further planning.

they are just failed business with above average marketing budgets. It would have sold to facebook just the same if it took over market as whatsapp did.

They almost always start out this way then slowly become figured out and integrated into the corporate machine. And the ones that are centralization-resistant become demonized and/or suppressed by the media. Tor, bitcoin, etc.

The entire history of the internet is basically decentralized protocols being slowly transformed into corporate walled-gardens.

isn't that the exact opposite take from the article and anecdotes it contains?

I never used it, but remember the hype. It didn't get there by not working.

the eulogy also forgets it was a mesh-tweeter public and all, not a mesh end to end private comunication solution people should have been using on those situations.

It's been years since I had it, but I uninstalled it when I figured out it was breaking my phones wifi connectivity. I don't know how or why, but when it was installed, my wifi was inconsistent and would frequently drop. I would uninstall it, and the problem would go away. This was on Android at least 5 years, and maybe as many as 10.

Once you realize that the ability to update code, obviously, negates any advantage "end-to-end encryption" brings, or any other form of security, you'll quickly find there is not a single secure messenger.

This is an argument I've never been able to successfully make to anyone except a military colonel.

If the electric grid and cellphone go, what would be the problem with devices being Apple- and Google-controlled?

It seems like you're talking about two related but ultimately distinct concerns, i.e. reliance against infrastructure failures and reliance against organizational failures.

So they wanted Grindr from before they started fudging the distance numbers.

While I quite like Meshtastic and have literally dozens of t-beams, they serve fairly different usecases. Meshtastic is great for keeping in touch with your preorganized paragliding group or whatever, but the need for special hardware will always limit adoption in emergent scenarios vs. FireChat's "we're going to the protest; install this app".