Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat worked without internet at Jantar Mantar protests. Now facing govt ban

There are two ways in which one can think of Gandhi's relevance. One of these is his policies. The other is precepts about conduct which he gave to us, wrote M R Masani in 1979.

File photo of Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey | Bloomberg

New Delhi: Jack Dorsey’s decentralised, offline messaging app, Bitchat, became the centre of a major controversy on Friday after India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre under the Ministry of Home Affairs requested GitHub to take down all pages hosting its source code. 

The development came on the heels of an alleged government attempt to disable mobile internet services during protests in Delhi on Thursday.

Bitchat was developed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey as a weekend experiment last year and used a Bluetooth mesh network that allowed users to send messages to each other even when they were offline without needing phone data, Wi-Fi, or even a phone number.

On Friday, Dorsey shared photos on X, claiming an MHA takedown order. 

“The govt of India is making demands for this tech to be shut down,” he had posted along with the photos. 

While Bitchat may not be a household name, it is an app whose primary function is to make communications possible in the absence of internet, making it difficult to intercept. 

What is Bitchat?

In July 2025, Dorsey announced on X that he was working on a new app. On July 10, he presented Bitchat on GitHub as an experimental app. 

Dorsey explained on the app’s GitHub forum that he initially developed its core functionality over a weekend to experiment with various low-level network technologies, especially mentioning Bluetooth mesh, store-and-forward networks, and a few encryption technologies. 

“The initial intention was super simple,” wrote Dorsey. “The ability for you to exchange text messages with someone in your vicinity that you’ve never met before. That way you don’t need any identifying information about them no phone number or e-mail, etc. Kind of like Firechat.”

Firechat was a peer-to-peer mobile app that used Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Direct. 

According to Dorsey, in about a day, they had an app “able to transmit small blocks of data over multiple hops over bluetooth mesh”. 

Later, Dorsey, along with other community members, added features like private messages and channels to the Android app. It then moved to iOS and in late August 2025 was officially available on the Apple App Store.

How does Bitchat work?

While WhatsApp and Telegram require mobile data and a stable internet connection to deliver messages, Bitchat utilises a decentralised model based on Bluetooth. 

The app is designed to create a mesh network using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), which allows direct peer-to-peer communication. 

Instead of routing messages through servers on the internet like most messaging services, each device running Bitchat can act as both a sender and a relay node. This means a message from someone may be sent directly to another nearby Bitchat user, or, if the intended recipient isn’t within Bluetooth range, it can hop through a series of intermediate users and their phones until it reaches its destination. 

This multi-hop capability, whereby devices form an intermediary mesh, enables messages to be relayed far beyond direct Bluetooth range, but depends heavily on a sufficient number of users with the app active in an area. 

Due to its localised and direct nature of communication, Bitchat does not mandate registering with a phone number or any other form of personal identifier for using its Bluetooth mode, an aspect which significantly strengthens the anonymity of the users.

 The developers describe the technology as employing a “dual-transport architecture”, integrating Bluetooth mesh with the Nostr protocol (an open protocol for decentralised social networking) for internet-based communications when network connectivity is available. In essence, Bitchat provides a resilient means to communicate in scenarios where traditional internet infrastructure fails-be it during natural disasters, large public events, or prolonged network outages. 

The very advantage of its distributed and offline functionality has consequently attracted the attention of security agencies. 

The alleged concerns raised by the MHA appear to revolve around the app’s ability to circumvent lawful interception mechanisms used to trace suspects in criminal investigations. Ultimately, Jack Dorsey’s original vision of a weekend experimentation app-a tool for simple, privacy-preserving local communication-has found itself at the heart of a global discussion about the fundamental nature of digital connectivity, government control, and individual liberties in the face of network disruptions.

(Edited by Saptak Datta)