Fireside Messenger lets you send messages even if you aren’t connected to a network

Just a heads up, if you buy something through our links, we may get a small share of the sale. It’s one of the ways we keep the lights on here. Click here for more.

There are dozens of messaging apps out there like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger that let users send messages to people around the world, but they all tend to rely on an internet connection. Now, there’s an all-new mobile app called Fireside Messenger that lets you send messages to users even without a network connection.

Fireside Messenger is a brand new app from Stanislav Shalunov and the folks at Clostra. Like other messaging apps, Fireside Messenger lets users send end-to-end encrypted messages to users all over the world.

Where this app differs, however, is that you don’t need to be connected to the internet to send your messages. This gives the app potential to thrive in situations such as power outages, network failures, or simply areas where internet infrastructure is lacking.

As to how this works, the press release states:

The app is built on the NewNode protocol which relies on three technical building blocks to distribute content: Low Extra Delay Background Transport (LEDBAT); BitTorrent Distributed Hash Table (DHT); and device-to-device connectivity (D2D). The protocol avoids censorship, reduces content delivery costs, improves network reliability, and offers significant Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS) resilience. 

READ MORE: How to protect yourself and your smartphone at a protest

Shalunov is a proponent of free speech. After growing up in the Soviet Union, he developed Firechat, a way to allow protestors in Hong Kong to communicate with each other without an internet connection. Now, he has decided to broaden that functionality with Fireside Messenger.

“Free and open communication is a fundamental human right. Fireside Messenger guarantees this right and allows you to stay connected worldwide, without worrying about privacy or WiFi connection,” says Shalunov.

Shalunov has taken his experiences from his homeland to heart and developed an app that will help people avoid the censorship that is sometimes put in place by authoritarian governments.

“As the government is blocking more VPNs and other censorship circumvention tools, Russian civil society and regular users need to come up with new creative means of making their voices heard and getting access to independent information online,” says Natalia Krapiva, Access Now Tech-legal counsel.

As of right now, the Fireside Messenger app is available on the Google Play Store. That app is still relatively early in its development, so there will likely be changes or improvements in the future. This app is potentially groundbreaking and should give good access to communication where that access may be tough to come by.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

Editors’ Recommendations:

• Instagram users can now join group chats in Facebook Messenger
• Google Lens is getting even better when using images for search
• Snapchat has awesome new filters and stickers that help teach people American Sign Language
• People are now spending more time watching TikTok than YouTube