Iran protesters turn to Bluetooth messaging app to bypass internet blackouts

With anti-government protests in Iran intensifying in the last few weeks, authorities have stepped up their crackdown on both protestors and internet access. Even as Elon Musk-owned SpaceX is offering free Starlink satellite service in the country, the Iranian government is reportedly tracking down people using it to share videos of the protests . With the Iranian regime cracking down on all forms of internet, people in the country are turning to apps like Bitchat, an open-sourced Bluetooth-based messaging app. Developed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey, the app does not require an active internet connection. Available on both iOS and Android devices, a report by Reuters suggests Bitchat’s use in Iran has more than tripled as people are looking for workarounds. Bitchat has a pretty barebones UI. (Express Photo) What is Bitchat, and how is it helping Iranian protestors? Launched in July last year, Bitchat is a messaging app that works offline . Unlike WhatsApp and Telegram, which require an active internet connection, Bitchat needs no registration, no login, no email and uses Bluetooth to send and receive messages . Also, unlike X (formerly Twitter), which stores data on a server, Bitchat has no servers. Instead, the app uses peer-to-peer technology, allowing protestors to directly send messages from one device to another. Since Bluetooth has a pretty short range, Bitchat works at a range of around 100 meters. But when people physically move from one place to another, they constantly join and leave what are called “Bluetooth clusters.” Dorsey says the range of the app depends on the number of users connected, which means the more people using it, the wider the effective range becomes. As it turns out, Iranians are also turning to Noghteha (meaning dots in Persian), a closed-source fork of Bitchat that comes with full Persian/Farsi support, an improved UI and features like Emergency Data Wipe that cater to the local population. At the time of writing, Noghteha had more than 50,000 downloads on the Google Play Store, but the number may be higher because of Bluetooth transfer, sideloading and peer-to-peer sharing.

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