[gnarea]

> These practical problems make the project less feasible:

I agree! But...

> 1. Making end applications implement your protocol (eg Facebook) makes it way harder to scale, simply because the enshittified big tech apps are unlikely to care. Now the apps will have to maintain a separate service and not get paid to do it.

My bet is that, once we gain sufficient ground, Facebook and other mainstream social networks will be interested in building an alternative clients powered by Awala, just like Twitter built "Twitter Lite" back in the day. It's likely to be a PR stunt.

OTOH, third parties could build such applications, as long as the social networks give them access to their APIs (without extortionate fees!).

Until we gain sufficient ground, we'll carry on with in-house Awala-compatible apps like Letro.[1]

> 2. Having deliberate physical couriers travel across borders are a massive risk

Agreed. But there are options to avoid travelling across borders per my reply here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41695801

> a hop to hop mesh network where connectivity can be easily established across all users (every user is a courier when they connect to unlimited mobile data or wifi) will make the network a lot more available

I don't think that's a practical solution. Bluetooth-based meshnets are rather cumbersome to use, and WiFi-based ones are not even feasible (on Android, for example, you'd have to root your phone). Also, the regions we're targeting have low-spec devices, where most won't have enough capacity to replicate so much data from their family/neighbours.

[1] https://letro.app/en/