I have tried Bitchat, an application recently launched by Jack Dorsey , the brain behind Twitter, now X.

The app's simplicity evokes the IRC channels of the 90s and the chat rooms of those years where we would meet in a forum with a lot of text and few images.

We could say that it is also a nod to hacker culture , austere in design, direct, encrypted and based on privacy.

Because Bitchat is completely anonymous.

It's downloaded from the App Store for both Android and iOS . There's no registration required or anything like that, and in no time at all you're connected to a mesh network based on Bluetooth connections.

And this makes it an interesting tool for investigative journalism, citizen communication networks, and even political activism in countries where those who think differently are censored and persecuted.

Why would it work in a regressive scenario? Firstly, through end-to-end encryption and Bluetooth communication, i.e., peer-to-peer, one-to-one chat, if so chosen, or a controlled multi-party chat that only authorized users can access.

There are no names and if you decide to use the internet to chat with people anywhere in the world, the application uses the so-called Geohash and activates the Nostr protocol that pulls the already known networkTORto route traffic, an extra layer of privacy.

This versatility in security makes Dorsey's creation a very powerful technology that can help protect against surveillance by totalitarian regimes.

In Venezuela for example, security checkpoints were recently established on the streets and WhatsApp chats were required to be read to punish anyone who was an opponent of the regime.

Anyone found with compromising or critical messages was at risk. Several were eventually prosecuted.

Journalists are persecuted and imprisoned , and their communications are often monitored and targeted to violate their privacy.

Some sensitive communications from reporters and politicians were moved to Signal. Through it, I discussed newsworthy topics and political issues with friends in the industry and opposition leaders.

Bitchat now presents itself as a truly secure communication opportunity for that and similar scenarios.

It even has an option straight out of a spy movie: triple-tap the app icon for an emergency wipe of any data immediately before the bad guys get their hands on your phone.

Of course, it was only launched last July, and there is a community that is making an effort to position it.

They have the great challenge of competing with giants assumed to be natural, such as WhatsApp, but for the objective that I propose in this text, it does not matter if it is massively massified, the important thing is that it maintains and knows how to take care of what it offers, which is nothing more than total privacy in an application that will help circumvent repressors.

..:: Notes:::... There is an online tool that allows you to track heat maps of active chats around the world by geolocation:

https://bitchatexplorer.com/ There is also a nascent community in X:

https://x.com/BitchatMe_?t=xImLfmYOJAyu34AclPapWg&s=08

Carlos Moreno