Twitter Co-Founder Jack Dorsey Launches New Bluetooth-Based Chat App

Jack Dorsey, a co-founder of Twitter, unveiled Bitchat, a new encrypted messaging app, on Sunday.

Bluetooth mesh networks are used to run the decentralized chat service, which Dorsey called his “weekend project” on the website that is now known as X. According to a white paper, it is a peer-to-peer, encrypted, ephemeral service that doesn’t depend on any “permanent identifiers” like phone numbers or email addresses.

Instead of using an internet connection to communicate, mesh networking allows users to connect devices locally.

According to Dorsey’s white paper, “Bitchat allows direct peer-to-peer messaging within physical proximity, further expanding the effective range beyond direct Bluetooth connections with automatic message relay.” The app might support Wi-Fi Direct in a later release.

The program is described as “resilient to censorship and network outages” in the article. According to Bitchat’s fine print, privacy is a “fundamental human right.” It also states that the service doesn’t have any user-tracking features or gather any personal information.

With 10,000 users testing it out, Bitchat’s beta on the app-testing platform TestFlight is now fully operational. The app is being reviewed for a wider release, Dorsey stated on X.

The service Bitchat is not the first of its sort. During pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong in 2014 and 2022, respectively, encrypted messaging apps FireChat and Bridgefy were widely utilized.