Amid the takedown request to GitHub for BitChat, OSS project ReadSync is guaranteed to be much better alternative

I’m worried if my prototype application will also be subjected to be banned from Github - like BitChat, amid the GenZ protests in India. Need Backers!

What ReadSync is?

ReadSync is a minimalistic web application, based on the ActivityPub communication standard. It handles events to be communicated across its publishers and subscribers. The subscribers receives the events on their device as a push notification and have to the ability to synchronize onto their Google Workspace account, synchronizing across their calendar.

Fun fact about ReadSync, not having a User Interface is because it strives to stay minimalistic. The main user interface is the user’s device itself. Every device/browsers have their own notification UI. ReadSync utilizes this UI feature to bring forth information about different events, and it goes on to Cloud Calendar (currently Google Calendar). It uses service workers to enable this ability. Once the user signs in, the service worker, fetches the notifications published to the signed in user. Each user also has the ability to publish event notification across ReadSync users (subscribers).

Who is it for?

Event Organizers and like-minded leaders. For the people who want to organize their day to day activities. And increase the participations. ReadSync will be the best answer to all.

Handling events enable the users to think about managing their time and makes them contribute based on the event topics. Be a manager of your day to day activities. Communicating as an overseer is a personality trait of leaders. ReadSync is meant to amplify these behavior.

The Workflow

• User signs into a ReadSync node
• They publish events to their subscribers on the node/server
• Subscriber logs in
• Subscriber receives the notifications
• Subscriber gets to choose, if they want to synchronize a particular notification of an event onto their Google Calendar
• ReadSync adds a new event onto the Subscriber’s Google Calendar

Comparing ReadSync with BitChat, amid the GenZ protests

What this means is that, the signal is very less. Unlike some applications that keeps you in synchronized with the outside world.

Let’s think in terms of cybersecurity. You can still try to track down a signal coming from Bitchat or any other application. At any moment you gain access to regulate these signals. Say when the privacy law changed, you are given access to platform or the platforms in control of the distribution.

But ReadSync doesn’t automatically updates, even if the law changed. It will only if it is given the network access to. Which means you are still able to use it, even past the time the privacy law changed. By making the project opensource, any changes to the protocol or how ReadSync is used, is open to all public eyes.

With VPNs enabled the updation can be done, which means. No data shall pass through regulatory DNS servers. Making ReadSync fully capable of being untrackable.

Use Case

As it is an Event sharing application with the ability to circumvent surveillance. And also considering the recent NEET controversy and Janata Mantir protests (GenZ protests in India), to be able to conduct propaganda seems to be the most disruptive use case.

Current Limitations

Right now, it is not developed as an user friendly application as the prototype is what’s been released. Still the prototype can be used in a decentralized way. Meaning, you host it on your own server, and everyone who signs up on your server’s readsync, will be able to synchronize events with every other participants on your server.

But, you are not able to synchronize events from servers outside your own. The prototype are not linked.

The last contribution to ReadSync was 3 years ago, with a few changes it can be updated to be demo-able to the latest changes.

Lines of Code

Number of lines of code counted using: https://ghloc.vercel.app/ ReadSync is super minimalistic and does not require you to download the application onto your device.

The Vision

Handling information like events, is often aligned with being progressive. Chat communications can divert from the actual goals. To be able to have an oversight, over the events that need to happen for a particular goal, it needs to be managed and communicated properly. This enable the users to manage and contribute over just contribute without direction.

What can an event have?

• According to the Google Calendar API, we will be able to add
  • Title of the event
  • Date and Time
  • Location
  • Description
  • Alert setting
  • Media

FAQs

Why ReadSync was not talked about during the previous GenZ protests or any community campaigns

• I was not in a place where I’m fully aware and informed about what the internal affairs of a foreign community is. I didn’t want ReadSync to gain public attention and be used in a way that was highly politically incorrect and disruptive to the peace of a community it was distributed to.
• The development of the project is very limited, due to no backers.

Why is the development halted?

I stopped developing ReadSync because of the disruptive it can have. With the ability to be fully anonymous, and be able to organzie events is much more powerful (Refer the controvercy and takedown requests that happens on Bitchat, and other similar privacy enabled communication platforms). The prototype itself, still can be used for such purposes. And the development was halted to gain more insight on how it can be maintained without being a threat to communities. Currently due to the development being halted, the project has become deprecated, just because of the latest updates that happened across browsers and Cloud APIs. Which is fix that can be done without much effort.

Jaggery UI library being developed is a vision that speaks this. The prototype has basic html elements without any stylings, to showcase only the functionalities. To prove it’s ability was the only motivation. ReadSync is waiting for backers that support the project, the Jaggery UI library is way to speed up the frontend development and enable a much more user friendly interface. Making it accessible to anyone.

Links

• ReadSync Github: https://github.com/riojosdev/node-readsync
• Jaggery UI library (currently being developed internally): https://github.com/riojosdev/jaggery
• Demo posted on Instagram: Initial demo posted on Instagram

Development Roadmap (suspected to more changes)

• [optional] And if the current concern for BitChat, is because of the communication being in a non-widely regulated communication protocol, i.e. Bluetooth. What if readsync was also integrating bluetooth protocol for communicating with its subscribers.
• Making the UI more user friendly. Jaggery UI library was created to fast track the UI design of the ReadSync application.
• Migrating current libraries and code to the latest workflow
• Adding collections for publishers to access their only subscribers and not everyone who uses ReadSync
• Having event and follower/following management features
• Add ability to sync with other Cloud APIs (Apple, Microsoft)