Briar

“It works like a charm and isn't actually that hard to set up”

“I played around with Briar for a while: it worked well, and had an option to install peer-to-peer without going through any app store”

“good projects like Briar have been doing this for over 10 years”

“Still receives, and for the foreseeable future will receive, security updates”

“Briar was unique in its ability to discover peers over local networks and Bluetooth”

“I will be spreading the word about this project and keeping some APKs for if the shit hits the fan again.”

“I am mostly fine with texting only, but such things are an instant no-go for most people.”

“P2P E2E encryption is the only way to bypass bullshit laws”

“Briar is/was slightly different though, being P2P and E2E encrypted”

“I liked the concept, and tested it out a little on my Android devices. But it looked straight out of 2009, and it had the issues described in the post.”

“Encrypted messaging like Signal and Briar is so much more accessible thanks to smartphones.”

“I agree that Briar is better, but unfortunately, it can't run on iPhones.”

“Both Session and Briar are decentralized technologies where you would never be able to approach a company”

“there is no Bluetooth involvement at all, so your Bluetooth MAC address is not exposed”

“Briar exposes your Bluetooth MAC, and there's a bunch of nasty Bluetooth vulns waiting to be exploited.”

“Briar and Session are the better encrypted messengers.”

“Briar only works on Android which is going to exclude a lot of iPhone users.”

“Briar has the advantage of being usable with bluetooth and internet so it makes it much more useful.”

“To me Briar has great potential that is dwarfed by limitations”

“The hard part is the protocol isn't designed for this and is easily overwhelmed.”

“Install the damn Briar app today, while it can be done trivially, and you have no use for it.”

“So it is easy to avoid making the sort of identity errors commonly made by other schemes.”

“Best to download the *.apks now so you can help others sideload them and stay safe.”

“Bluetooth's range is far too limited for this to be useful or to make a workable mesh.”

“And it means every person has a complete copy, so it's nearly impossible to find all copies to censor it.”

“one advantage of not doing multihop is that you get at least initial insecure identification before any identifiable secure communication”

“I like briar for the fact that i already have the hardware”

“No they sadly don't have that, and that's the major issue of connectivity.”

“the only one that worked at all without having a router around was Briar”

“It's trivially jammable, as evidenced by the network not working at popular events such as Defcon with default firmware settings.”

“I love Briar and so tremendously excited to be reading this”

“Briar is an option in such cases but its not realtime.”

“a store and forward system like Scuttlebutt/Briar/etc might work better”

“briar leaks some metadata from what I've heard (unconfirmed)”

“Its for times like this briar or similar applications are super useful.”

“Briar might help but Briar still leaks some metadata”

“Mesh networks like Briar or Bridgefy work peer-to-peer over Bluetooth but have tiny range.”

“If you need metadata-privacy by design, you're better off with purpose-built tools like Cwtch”

“It didn't work at all. Messages arrived hours later, when they arrived.”

“I do really like the idea of off-grid networks in general”