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Comment by yaris | Hacker News Reader

Any situation when mobile internet cannot be used. That is not only protests, but also legal gatherings, i.e. street concerts, or places where mobile coverage is poor in general.

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> That is not only protests, but also legal gatherings[...]

Oops! You (unintentionally?) make it sound like protests are illegal.

They are.

That depends on where your live (and when), but: Protest is the cornerstone of democracy and in general you shouldn't need permission to organize a demonstration.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/can-democracy-exist-witho...

I prefer voting. I find protests annoying. They're a good way for people to let off steam, hang out with friends, get photos for the international press etc. but they're not the right mechanism for finding out what the people want.

They're definitely effective when most of the country wants the government out, but by that point a vote would certainly do just as well, and with fewer flying bricks.

Protests are designed to be annoying.n They are supposed to draw attention to issues that lack the needed attention according to protestors.

Voting does not allow to express that a certain issue is politically important to you.

Protests can serve as an implied threat if the government is gaming the election process. They're certainly preferable to a riot or a coup attempt in that scenario.

They also serve to draw attention to issues that aren't showing up on the ballot for whatever reason. The system doesn't always work in an ideal way. To that end protests are supposed to be annoying to those who don't care.

Which is why they're illegal. Governments don't like being threatened.

Just out of curiosity, where is that? Protests are legal in most of the world I think.

Everyone prefers voting.. But to be able to vote, a vote must be happening. Protests are sometimes the only way to make a vote happen in the first place.

They are also a good communication tool for the world to see what the people are struggling with.

Name three currently existing democracies. USA is out (protests illegal), Europe is out (protests require registration which is denied for anything that has a risk of effecting change), the Middle East and Asia are out for obvious reasons. Maybe there's a democracy somewhere in Africa?

Things like this would make a good hamburger index of freedom.

It depends on the country you're in, obviously. I've been to countries where protests are illegal (even 1-man protests with a blank sheet of paper).

In many of the countries where this would be the most useful, protests are illegal.

Or planes.

but i use mobile internet because of the distance. how does bluetooth help with that?

What is your implication? This app is not for talking across the globe with people.

but the internet is for talking to people across the globe. and the app presents itself as an alternative for internet based apps. the reality is however that in any place where i can't use the internet, this app does not really solve that problem. it is only useful in situations where in most cases the alternative is talking face to face. it's not any situation where the internet can't be used, but just some of them. there certainly are good use cases for local communication, cases where face to face is just out of reach and many of these use cases are currently served with internet based apps too. but it's not an alternative to internet based apps per se.

The Internet is _not_ for talking to people across the globe. The Internet allows that, but not only that - one can have a Whatsapp chat with someone in the same bus, this is both legal and technically possible. The bitchat app serves the niche where talking face to face is not an option and talking across the globe is not needed. And the app explicitly states "infrastructure independence" as one of its design goals: "the network remains functional during internet outages", which cannot be served by internet-based apps by design.

technically possible but rather redundant and in most cases pointless. (yes, there are exceptions)

so i rather strongly disagree. 99% of my use of the internet is to talk to people across the globe. it's its primary use case. the example you mention is a fringe application, useful to a tiny minority.

"the network remains functional during internet outages"

that strongly implies that i can use this app to replace other apps that use the internet. but i can't, because it does not allow long distance communication the way internet based apps do.

so for 99% of my needs this app is not helping me. it does not make me independent of the internet. i have been in places where the internet was cut off due to political turmoil. and i have friends who have that happen to them. in all cases the main challenge was the lack of long distance communication. local communication was barely affected.

sms and phone still worked, and in fact the app that would have helped is one that can route data connections via sms and phone calls. like old acoustic modems.

infrastructure independence at a local level is nice, but much less serious or critical than independence for long distance communication. and long distance already starts at a few km.

I believe bitchat can also use the wider internet to exchange messages. So it is an app that can use either the internet or various other more local options. That seems like a desirable improvement to me.

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