[HacktionLab] Emailing under internet blackout

Mon Jan 19 11:44:32 UTC 2026

Oh maybe "Open Core" model was the wrong way to describe it.
There is no paid premium version of keet and from all I know never will be.
The only reason for keet to not be open source yet is to not release
features that have not yet been finalized in how they work architecturally
and thus would be difficult to upgrade when people use them to build stuff
and to a smaller degree another reason is for scammy "web3" folks to not
copycat and re-brand keet while keet is sadly still not as widely known as
it should be.

I don't think any other p2p system will be able to compete with them,
because they have a large world class team specialized in peer to peer
software for almost 2 decades and they are well funded to work on this full
time, while many other p2p messengers are sadly not funded at all or at
least not well funded and hence cant have big teams working on it full time.

I don't know the specific situation of Briar, but I am regularly trying all
the p2p messengers out there just to stay somewhat up to date of what's
happening, because i'm a peer to peer developer myself.

On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 at 03:36, a.praetorius at serapath.de <
a.praetorius at serapath.de> wrote:

> Keet is meant to become open source.
> Think of it as an open core model and the main reason is that a p2p stack
> is difficult to impossible to update once its out in the wild and many
> people build stuff on top of it.
> They are releasing more and more of keet in a modular fashion over time
> and you can already build keet like messengers with the stack that is
> released, which includes a p2p electron equivalent called `pear` runtime.
> Some of the most advanced features keet currently provides are still very
> new and haven't yet been stabilized and they team wants to guarantee that
> what is released is stable and not likely to change apart from performance
> and security updates and occasionally some extra feature if needed.
> That is the main reason.
>
>
> Briar is a great messenger I have used extensively in the past and I think
> it comes down to what you want.
> In addition to private (group) chats, it allows forums and blogs, but imho
> it's only available for android and not other mobile systems and also not
> desktop, whether windows, macOS or linux.
> It doesn't do video or audio, no audio calls or video calls and not
> conference calls either.
> I have never seen briar chat rooms with >10k members.
> And you can also not share files of arbitrary size with it.
> ...the list goes on.
>
> Keet in many ways is not just peer to peer, but also in many ways better
> than existing big tech messenger apps.
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, 19 Jan 2026 at 00:21, Devon <lepetitprince at fastmail.uk> wrote:
>
>> Thanks, I'd not heard of keet. I think my only question is, if the team
>> is used to building FOSS stuff and it's using a FOSS stack, why isn't Keet
>> FOSS? (Which I appreciate is a question for that team, not for you - but
>> it's worth asking)
>>
>> Ta
>> Devon
>>
>> On Mon, 19 Jan 2026, at 2:16 AM, a.praetorius at serapath.de wrote:
>>
>> https://keet.io
>>
>> Try keet, it has no problem with the chinese firewall.
>> The biggest issue is probably getting it installed if the website is
>> blocked, but you can get it from github or even somehow get the AppImage to
>> them.
>>
>> It works offline first, so they can write and if somebody is nearby, they
>> can sync messages and if that person then travels physically to where the
>> internet works, the messages will reach other recipients and it works the
>> other way around too. I think keet is by far the most mature option that
>> exists - nothing else compares right now.
>>
>> While keet is closed source I know and more or less trust the team that
>> is developing it. They have a decades long record of doing open source p2p
>> software and the stack and runtime it is build on top of is entirely open
>> source.
>>
>> On Fri, 16 Jan 2026 at 01:20, brentc <brentc at riseup.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Thanks all, good advice, I've passed on.
>> On 15/01/2026 21:28, Tim Dobson wrote:
>>
>> I'd probably avoid emailing them for the moment.
>>
>> I'm less sure you'll get them in trouble, and more worried that whatever
>> you email may be outdated by the time it arrives - wait til there's more
>> clarity, and then raise comms by asking how they're doing (which is a very
>> neutral question and should be answerable easily even if they're worried
>> about interception).
>>
>> I hope your friends come through this fine.
>>
>> On Tue, 13 Jan 2026 at 21:22, Patrice Riemens <patrice at puscii.nl> wrote:
>>
>>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> As far as I can judge from here (Rural SW France ;-), it's going to be a
>> tough job to contact yr friends in teheran in the present circumstances.
>> Won't surely work over gmail. The Guardian had a good explainer on how the
>> blackout works - it appears to be very precise and even Musk's Starling is,
>> at least partially blocked - using Russian technology form the war in
>> Ukraine. yet some messgs seem to filter thru. I'd think a relay of friends
>> of friends who know a friend who manages to ... etc. Pb is that you need to
>> have contact with yr friends to be able to cantact the friend of a friend
>> who etc ... Not easy, but you might have luck, or tough luck if yr queries
>> fall in the wrong hands.
>>
>> Now pray the ugly theocracy falls sooner rater than later. It will.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "brentc" <brentc at riseup.net>
>> To: hacktionlab at lists.aktivix.org
>> Sent: Tuesday, 13 January, 2026 22:01:35
>> Subject: [HacktionLab] Emailing under internet blackout
>>
>> A question came up about emailing to Iran: "I have some contacts in
>> Tehran who are anti-authoritarian educators I was supposed to be
>> recording a presentation for them to show at their seminar series (I've
>> done this for them before) - next week. I'm not sure what to do now, I'm
>> assuming if I email them [they on gmail] I won't get through. Big/stupid
>> ask - Does anyone tecchy know how an internet blackout is likely to
>> work? I.e. I'm not sure whether to email my contact, could it be
>> intercepted and get him in trouble?"
>>
>> I didn't have conclusive answers. Any thoughts? I don't know exactly how
>> sensitive the comms are and I gather encrypted comms hasn't been set up.
>>
>> b
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>> ........................................................
>> be excellent to each other :-)
>>
>
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