It's been years since I had it, but I uninstalled it when I figured out it was breaking my phones wifi connectivity. I don't know how or why, but when it was installed, my wifi was inconsistent and would frequently drop. I would uninstall it, and the problem would go away. This was on Android at least 5 years, and maybe as many as 10.

the eulogy also forgets it was a mesh-tweeter public and all, not a mesh end to end private comunication solution people should have been using on those situations.

This critcism is about a decade out of date:

> In 2014, after Hong Kong protesters demonstrated to the world how effective a tool it was, news blogs quickly pointed out that FireChat messages were not secure. By 2015, Open Garden updated the app to include end-to-end encryption,

isn't that the exact opposite take from the article and anecdotes it contains?

I never used it, but remember the hype. It didn't get there by not working.

I've tried it, and it was pretty bad.

This type of service needs Apple and Google support to go anywhere, given how restricted access to radio hardware and background processing is on iOS and Android, and they're clearly not interested.

Apple has even rolled back AirDrop functionality, supposedly because of people receiving unwanted photos (which I don't doubt happened, but changing the defaut could address that – just outright removing the option to receive from anybody seems wrong).

There's absolutely no reason we shouldn't at least have a P2P Wi-Fi based chat client preinstalled on every iOS and Android phone, with a default of being able to message only known contacts. I mean, even the Nintendo DS could do it in 2004!