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There were some rumblings about building out an "open source" alternative to the Internet about 10 years ago. The idea was to use various WiFi technologies to create a network that was encrypted and controlled by no one. It certainly is doable given enough people, but it seems like it just never materialized. Did I miss it? Surely there has been advancements in the last decade.

Where I live I have an elevation advantage. I could easily host a high-speed point-to-point link with line of sight to other peaks as far as 80 miles. I always wanted to get something like this rolling.

There were some rumblings about building out an "open source" alternative to the Internet about 10 years ago. The idea was to use various WiFi technologies to create a network that was encrypted and controlled by no one. It certainly is doable given enough people, but it seems like it just never materialized. Did I miss it? Surely there has been advancements in the last decade. Where I live I have an elevation advantage. I could easily host a high-speed point-to-point link with line of sight to other peaks as far as 80 miles. I always wanted to get something like this rolling.

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[–] • 1 pt

The point of a meshnet is that it's like local very near by transmitters/receivers.

If someone posts child abuse on the world wide web that person could be anywhere.

If they do it on a meshnet then everyone would know it was someone local in the community.

Seems like that would be a great way for the offending party to get their house torched in their sleep or get arrested or have something else equally unpleasant occur to them.

Perhaps just like a notice that says "this network is run by your neighbors who can see everything you do on the network unless you specifically encrypt the traffic" and displays first thing after logging on would put everyone on their best behavior.

[–] • 0 pt

The whole point of the thing was that all traffic is encrypted. There's almost zero possibility of it working if it isn't.