[doublebind]

While I agree that an open and distributed messaging system (such as Waku[1]) can improve things, it’s not enough. Apple Store and Google Play Store are the true gatekeepers. And governments can request Apple or Google to remove an app from the Store at their will (this has happened before).

An app out of these stores has zero possibilities of survival. Average users don’t use (nor want to use) VPNs or hacks to use their phones.

[1] https://waku.org/

[Maxburn]

Two late thoughts; apple just enabled notifications for web apps in safari. So in theory you could have a messaging app not in the store. Maybe. Not sure what the state of this is in android.

Hopefully soon we will have sideloading on ios too.