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meshtastic should not be used for protest communications
(hexbear.net)
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this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2025
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Yeah... It's potentially useful tech for niche cases, but ultimately its security guarantees are MUCH MUCH weaker than those offered by e2ee chat apps, etc. Very basic. It beats unencrypted walkie talkies, but its security is more an afterthought unfortunately.
A lot of the issues/limitations stem from it running off microcontroller-powered devices semi-independently, rather than something with more horsepower like an ARM SoC, or just being a dumb modem hooked up to a smarter device. I'd love to see lora used in a more security conscious way but the network effect of meshtastic adoption might just end up being too strong.
Meshcore and Reticulum do that, though they have a much smaller userbase than meshtastic.
So why do people use Meshtastic over Meshcore and Reticulum?
Meshtastic came first, there's a lot of existing Meshtastic networks, and Meshtastic does all of it's processing on the microprocessor (while Reticulum requires a separate computer in addition).
I'll have to look into reticulum. Can you not even have a dumb repeater node without a separate computer?
you can't, because reticulum isn't LoRa focused, the reticulum node is the computer/phone. There's a bunch of other interfaces it can transmit over, like AX.25 (HAM radio, really only useful in EU), serial, Tor, I2P, the internet, and more.
also, since the processing is done on a more powerful chip, it means that it has significantly more efficient routing than Meshtastic. Meshtastic doesn't pick a path, it does flood routing where it has everyone retransmit, while reticulum only transmits as much as it needs to.
(well, you could have a dumb LoRa repeater, but that wouldn't really reticulum, even if it could extend the range of reticulum broadcasts)