Local connections are key, just like tribal living.

I get where you’re coming from. If BitChat required everyone to be staring at their phone at the same moment, yeah, it wouldn’t make much sense. But that’s not really how it works. Once the app is installed and Bluetooth is on, the phone just quietly participates. People don’t have to actively open it or think about it. It’s basically a passive relay that sits there until it’s needed. The use‑case isn’t “daily chatting with random people nearby.” It’s more like a backup layer for when the normal stuff fails — storms, outages, dead zones, whatever. In those moments, even a small number of people with the app installed is enough to create a working local network. Most folks don’t care about privacy or decentralization until something breaks. BitChat is just meant to still function when the usual infrastructure doesn’t. It’s not trying to replace anything — it’s just a fallback.

Locally bound, yet still tracked by Alphabet and pals, like Schmidt and Pichai watching your every move.