A fresh wave of interest in Jack Dorsey’s Bluetooth messenger Bitchat coincided with early 2026 and an escalation of clashes between citizens and authorities in two countries — Iran and Uganda. In the former, details are hard to trace amid an information blackout; the latter offers a clearer view of digital repression and resistance.
Ahead of Uganda’s presidential election on January 15th, the government of Yoweri Kaguta Museveni said it was preparing countermeasures against the decentralised radio messenger. Museveni’s challenger — singer and human-rights advocate Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, better known as Bobi Wine — urged supporters to install Bitchat to help secure a fair outcome.
In this ForkLog piece, we delve into events in the small African country and assess the technical potential of mesh networks in real-world silence.
Pre-emptive vacuum
In July 2025, Twitter cofounder and Block CEO Jack Dorsey introduced Bitchat, a messenger that runs over Bluetooth without an internet connection. The decentralised app, written in a few days through vibe-coding, initially drew only enthusiasts. Within two months, however, Bitchat was being used by participants in protests in Indonesia and Nepal, and by October it became the sole means of communication after a hurricane in Jamaica.
Interest in the product peaked in January 2026 amid mass protests in Iran. For demonstrators, Bitchat is an alternative weapon against shutdowns, independent of the whims of authorities and corporate chieftains.
Satellite internet would have suited the Ugandan opposition, where the authorities traditionally muzzle communications on the eve of presidential polls. But Elon Musk is never in a hurry with philanthropy. He opened free Starlink access over Iran only on January 13th, two weeks after mass street protests began, when US President Donald Trump officially announced his support. Civil society thus gained an extra tool alongside the “people’s” Bitchat.
Ugandan authorities prepared for a shutdown at the end of 2025. On December 19th, the Tax Authority banned the import of Starlink terminals. Access was preserved only for holders of a written permit from the army commander — who is also the president’s son — General Muhoozi Kainerugaba.
Despite the import ban, many terminals brought in earlier via “grey” channels continued to work. The authorities therefore leaned on Musk’s company.
On January 1st, at the request of the Uganda Communications Commission, Starlink enabled geolocation blocking. All equipment in the country became useless.
The charismatic opposition leader Bobi Wine opposed Museveni’s policy and devised a plan to counter shutdowns in order to record the real results at the polls.
On December 30th 2025, Wine urged supporters to download Bitchat. His idea was to use the messenger to exchange polling-station tally data among observers in the absence of internet.
Wine also appealed to Musk to reverse his company’s decision on Uganda and restore satellite coverage. In a post he wryly noted the billionaire’s glee at the toppling of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and his disregard for Africa.
Countermeasures
At first the authorities flatly denied plans to cut communications, but on January 13th they did just that. A directive came from the Uganda Communications Commission. At 18:00 local time public access to fixed and mobile internet was switched off, the sale and registration of SIM cards was banned, and outbound roaming and VPNs were blocked.
The regulator cited recommendations from the Inter-Agency Security Committee to combat “disinformation, electoral fraud and incitement to violence.”
The commission became the first state body in the world to declare determined opposition to the decentralised Bitchat messenger — a surprise to many. Most X users following the issue could not see how Bluetooth could be suppressed across Uganda.
The Google Trends chart Google Trends reflects interest in what had become the only means of communication left to the public. The latest spike came on the eve of the shutdown, January 12th–13th.
One of Bitchat’s lead developers, under the pseudonym Calle, called on Ugandan programmers to join the project.
Experts in mesh networking — and ordinary concerned users — did mobilise on X. Most commenters believed the government would find no effective counter.
Bitchat’s mechanics are elegantly simple, resting on a half-century of mesh-network experimentation.
A mesh network is a cell-like arrangement of computers in which workstations connect to one another and can act as switches for other participants. There are no central servers; encrypted messages are stored on users’ devices.
Smartphones A and B can communicate directly if they are nearby. Smartphone B can also reach device C, which is too far from A. B then acts as a relay, passing a message from C to A.
On January 12th, Calle released an update to harden connectivity in Uganda on top of the encrypted messenger.
In the V1 Bitchat beta, the firmware can turn a LoRa device into a regular Bitchat node. Messages from nearby messenger users are automatically relayed via long-range antennas.
In theory this offers a huge advantage, but in Uganda importing the necessary hardware is now nearly impossible.
According to Calle, by January 6th about 1% of the country’s population had downloaded Bitchat. Per Chromestats, at the time of writing global Android installs exceeded 1.5m, up roughly 125,000 in a week.
Election day
On the eve of the vote, Uganda’s population found itself digitally isolated. In Kampala, containment forces and armour were deployed.
The police, using privileged internet access, duly flagged heightened security measures.
A sensational statement by the electoral commission chief, Simon Byabakama, added fuel to the fire.
On January 14th, he said he had received direct threats from unnamed senior officials demanding that he not declare certain candidates winners.
Byabakama publicly stated that he “does not hand out votes” and will announce the results that appear at polling stations.
Election day will be instructive not only for Ugandans but for the world. If Bobi Wine’s plan works, mesh networks will reach a new stage.
The key question for devotees of freedom and equality: what does the government have up its sleeve — if anything?
If officials are not bluffing, the world will witness another setback in the fight against dictatorship. What might the security services use?
Disabling a decentralised system like Bitchat is far harder than shuttering an ordinary messenger because there are no central servers to block at the ISP level. But there are ways to disrupt the network on the ground.
The following technical methods could suppress decentralised communications:
- wideband barrage jamming. Electronic-warfare (EW) units can flood an entire frequency range with powerful white noise, making any Bluetooth data exchange impossible within a given radius;
- targeted jamming of control channels. Bluetooth uses three specific channels (37, 38 and 39) for device discovery and advertising. Modern EW systems can scan the ether and jam only these frequencies, preventing phones from “seeing” one another and forming a network;
- “black hole” attack. Agents can deploy specially modified devices that look like ordinary Bitchat nodes. They accept messages from neighbours but never forward them. If enough such “dead” nodes appear, the network fragments and messages stall in small clusters;
- packet flooding. An attacking device can blast thousands of junk messages per second, overloading phone processors and draining batteries. Users would have to disable Bluetooth to avoid freezes;
- exploitation of code vulnerabilities. In July 2025, a critical flaw linked to packet-signature handling was found in Bitchat’s code. An attacker can send specially crafted “broken” data that triggers crashes in the app on all smartphones within Bluetooth range;
- “poisoned” installers. Security services can create fake Bitchat builds that look identical to the original but contain hidden code that blocks certain messages or shares users’ coordinates with the authorities;
- triangulation and direction finding. Any phone with Bluetooth enabled constantly emits radio. With directional antennas and triangulation algorithms, security services can locate active mesh nodes in a crowd to within a metre and physically detain relays.
At a national scale, Uganda’s government cannot simply “switch off” Bitchat. But it could likely control a few squares or polling stations.
In October 2025, as part of an aid package, Russia transferred $53m worth of military equipment to Uganda’s army. The kit included obstacle-clearing vehicles, trenchers, boats, workshops and a coastal station.
A coastal station may include a base unit with GPS, powerful transceiver antennas, radar and communications to identify vessels, determine their dimensions and course, and coordinate with ships and aircraft.
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According to the latest reports, Bobi Wine was encircled by law enforcement and the army at his home in Magere and in effect could not leave.
He held the final rally of the protest campaign on January 13th in Busiro East; the shutdown and a temporary “house arrest” of the opposition leader followed. At the rally, Wine wore a ballistic vest, swapping his trademark red beret for a tactical helmet.
Shortly before the current events, in an interview with The Telegraph, Wine admitted to physical and emotional fatigue:
“To wake up every day knowing that you will see someone run over by a car, someone maimed. You just don’t know who it will be today. It’s a huge strain, you understand? But at the end of each day you want to come back. Because, while you are crying over losses, you see inspiration being born right before your eyes. And that makes it all worth the effort.”