Peer to peer messaging to defeat censorship

I recently read this article on peer-to-peer messaging, and it got me thinking about the centralized, proprietary messaging silos that we have today. I'm talking about Discord, Snapchat, Telegram, WhatsApp, and WeChat.

What's the problem?

Lets say you're talking about something that your government doesn't like, such as Hong Kong independence in the case of China, or calling out BLM as a racist movement. Or, even plotting to overthrow the government right before getting kicked out of office.

These are all real cases that have happened in the 2020's and all valid use cases for peer-to-peer networks and end-to-end encryption.

Through corporate, government, or other pressures, you could be banned from platforms vital to your communication. This is exactly what happens frequently on WeChat and other platforms.

A quick search on Google, or DuckDuckGo for the multiple privacy violations of big tech companies reveals the truth.

Why peer-to-peer?

Imagine a place... like Discord where you can't get banned for basic things, such as joking about being underage or not aligning with their political views.

In a peer-to-peer network, when you send a message, you can be sure that it will actually go to the intended recipient, without passing through an intermediary. This allows users to have confidence in who they are messaging, as well as ensure that there are no third parties snooping in on your communications.
Your messages never pass through a server which could scan them for unwanted content, and instead go directly to your recipient.

That's great, what options exist?

• Status Private Messenger is an open-source, peer-to-peer, and end-to-end encrypted chat app, which also has a privacy focused web browser, social feed, and cryptocurrency trading built in. (Works on Android, iOS, Windows, Linux, and MacOS)
• Briar is also open-source, utilizes peer-to-peer connections, and is most notably known as the app to take to a protest. (Android Only)
• Berty is an in-development open-source option that uses Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to communicate when LAN isn't available.