✏ Messaging Apps - Pros and Cons

Briar is another interesting messaging app, end-to-end encrypted.

It uses Tor and connect people P2P thus, no servers in between, no metadata. It can also works when internet is down, with Wifi and BT.

According to the developpers, it does not drain battery as much as other P2P messaging apps as it does not relay messages all the time (like Tox or Ring - based on DHT).
Briar is in active development, but it’s in private beta status yet, though.

https://briarproject.org/index.html

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But if it uses Wifi and Bluetooth, doesn’t that mean that the range of sending messages is limited to approx. 50 metres? This means that you also could physically talk to the person you want to write to.
I don’t know if this is true, but I’m asking this myself everytime I read about peer-to-peer-messengers without the need of an internet connection… :confused:

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It works with internet or bluetooth or local network (wifi, not neccesarily connected to the internet). It may seem that the common usecase is connecting it to the internet, of course, but that’s simply not true on countries which block communications for political reasons. Or you can chat with your workmates over your work’s intranet, :wink:

P2P apps not only distribute your generated messages, but other messages and content as well. In this specific case, Briar doesn’t has only direct chats, but groups and blogs (original content or republished RSS feeds to avoid censorship) and public forums. So you can meet your friends and share with them the news feed of Amnesty International on countries where ISPs block NGOs, while resharing with them the messages of another group of people you’ve meet earlier, for example.

In Briar you only reshare the content you’ve subscribed to, though, and Briar has a solid and thorought security model.

Edit: I’ve just realised there’s no much info on their website. I’m the Spanish translator of Briar and I’ve been following the development close. I don’t know if the term “private beta” is accurate: source code is available and you can build the app yourself and test it like everyone. It is decentralized, thus open by design.

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Funny enough, Kontalk alpha8 was just released an hour ago: :smiley:

Join us testing it! :smiley:

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Just joined. Please invite me.

I added some minor things. The most important is, that the Wire server are open source now…

https://www.golem.de/news/messenger-wire-server-steht-komplett-unter-open-source-lizenz-1709-130151.html

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