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Berty Messenger for iOS and Android - Zero Trust Open Source Peer-to-Peer Messenger based on IPFS protocol (berty.tech)

submitted 2 years ago by danie10@lemmy.ml to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

4 comments fedilink hide all child comments

** Now in Android and iOS app stores **

No Face, No Name, No Number, No SIM card, No Internet! Berty is a messenger that doesn’t require any of your personal data or network connection (using Bluetooth Low Energy BLE). All conversations are encrypted with end-to-end encryption, in a fully distributed network.

It is a peer-to-peer messenger with no servers, no cloud - your data is only stored on the device where Berty is installed and used. No one would be able to access the data or shut the app down, not even the developers.

Being P2P, it means the IP address needs to be available to route messaging, but their site explains a bit about how they've tried to mask this. Whilst Briar is an excellent alternative, it is still Android only. The closest alternative is maybe Jami, but it lacks a non-Internet Bluetooth alternative if I recall correctly. Interestingly, Berty also can use Airdrop (iOS to iOS) and Android's Nearby as alternative protocols.

You can share your details and add contacts via a QR code, public key, or an invite link. It is currently available on both iOS and Android, with desktop clients to follow.

See https://berty.tech/

#technology #messenger #berty #P2P #IPFS #privacy

top 4 comments

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[–] sexy_peach@feddit.de 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The only ipfs component it uses is libp2p, right?

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.de 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

So we decided to abandon our custom network to start Berty V2 from scratch based on a full IPFS node [...].

Wat, that would be insane battery usage. They would have had this problem anyways, just because they do p2p messaging, a c2s model is way better for battery life. But going with a full ipfs node?? Whyyy, what purpose does it have? Content-addressable storage isn't really any use to them, right? Do they want to integrate filecoin?

[–] wazowski@lemmy.ml 0 points 2 years ago (1 children)

berty uses gomobile-ipfs, which is a version of libp2p adapted to run on mobile, therefore much more efficient, but also less capabilities iirc; gomobile-ipfs is rather efficient in my experience, i run two apps that use it and don't notice any unusual battery drain

the reason to run a full ipfs node is in order to pin(upload)/download content to ipfs, you have to run one if you want to do that; you can sort of get around it by using the ipfs-http-api, but that defeats the purpose of using ipfs, as utilising the http gateways makes the entire thing censorable and centralised

[–] sexy_peach@feddit.de 0 points 2 years ago

Interesting. Maybe I am underestimating the capabilities of modern smartphones. But libp2p has to keep a connection at all times in the background, right? For connectivity?