this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2025
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Privacy

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I recently stumbled upon Keet, which is a peer to peer messaging app with video calls and file sharing.

This app has a lot going for it:

  • The user experience is really good
  • ~~Free and open source~~ EDIT: the UI of Keet in closed atm, but the underlying P2P building blocks are open
  • Privacy friendly (no datacentre, server or middleman between you and the people you are talking to)
  • Better quality since there's no throttling of traffic
  • No file size limit

I'm baffled that this app seems like a well kept secret, so I just wanted to share it with you guys.

To me, peer to peer technology seems really interesting because it addresses the root cause of many of the harms that plagues the modern day internet: surveillance, platform silos, the market dominance of multi-national tech-conglomerates, energy usage of datacentres, etc.

What do you think? Can P2P be the solution to these problems?

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[–] PragmaticOne@lemmy.world 4 points 15 hours ago

Closed is closed is closed. Not even going to test on one of my VMs. :/

[–] stm@lemmy.dbzer0.com 21 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Payments Built In As your app grows, Holepunch lets you evolve into a business without compromises. With Bitcoin Lightning and USDt micropayments built-in, it's easy to implement and use powerful paid features in apps. Peers control their own data, including how it’s bought and sold. The days of tokens, ads, hidden incentives, and data harvesting are over.

No thank you

[–] belit_deg@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

I'm no crypto fan or plan on using micropayments either, but if I don't use it, where's the harm?

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Lightning is a steaming pile of horse shit. Anyone who thinks lightning is peer-to-peer is totally fooling themselves.

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Well I agree with you that Lightning isn't a magical piece of innovation that will scale Bitcoin to the masses. However you can use it p2p. There is no lie here. Is it easy to setup ? Is it easy to maintain ? Not really it's not hard but it's a entry barrier for sure.

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

A FOSS app focusing on privacy should be released on F-droid.

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

It's not FOSS, it is somewhat open source but the licence is too restrictive to be Free(dom) Software

[–] warmaster@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago (1 children)

I couldn't find the source nor the license. But if it's not FOSS I wouldn't even consider it.

[–] sonalder@lemmy.ml 2 points 15 hours ago

I tried it but they market themselves as Open Source and when I started digging I was like ehhhh... no thanks and I uninstall the app.

[–] dm9pZCAq@lemmy.ml 7 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

where is source code of keet?

it is not mentioned on site, I found their github https://github.com/holepunchto but I cannot find keet source here

[–] ReakDuck@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

He never said its Open Source and the feature fees explain why

[–] dm9pZCAq@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 day ago (2 children)

This app has a lot going for it:

  • Free and open source
[–] ReakDuck@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago

I skimmed that text 3 times to be sure. Seems like it heavily oversaw it.

[–] belit_deg@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

My bad, on the Pears homepage it says "Join the open-source P2P revolution", so I assumed that was the case.

Someone asked the same question in the community group chat. Seems like the UI for Keet is closed atm, the rest is open.

[–] gsv@programming.dev 6 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I dunno. P2P traffic always seems to overburden light users and it would indeed require the apps to always run in the background to relay the traffic. Although the idea seems compelling I wouldn’t install the software on a machine of mine.

[–] belit_deg@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I'm testing syncing, notification and battery usage now on a few devices to see how it behaves. So far, so good. It also lets you specify which type of user you are inviting, so that admins does the heavy lifting

[–] gsv@programming.dev 1 points 20 hours ago

I’m not sure I understand this, tbh. Does that mean the P2P network works on a chat group basis? Or does the user explicitly choose who to build a P2P network with? And then, there are lots of follow up questions already looking around the corner.

Their website seems to explain very little and the app itself is closed source. Although there are open source dependencies, it’s for instance unclear whether they are complete. So I guess it’ll all come down to trust into the software and the company. Btw. their privacy statement allows the usage of aggregate data for marketing purposes and the sharing of data with third parties, such as search engines. And latest at that point I’d rather self-host a matrix instance.

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The biggest downside with P2P on a mobile device is it needs to run in the background all the time, and constantly uses small amounts of data making connections.

[–] belit_deg@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

So far battery and data usage is ok, but we'll see after some more testing

[–] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

The other issue is if you're offline with no internet service and you come back online, you may not ever see any messages sent during that time.

[–] belit_deg@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Seems like they've got that covered