The EU's vote to continue its mass surveillance program, Chat Control, despite the majority voting against it triggered me. I froze DarkSpeak years ago simply because working on something that promotes free speech between friends and family is dangerous in today's western "democracies".
I asked myself what I can do to help make the world a little freer. A little better. Make it a little harder for surveillance states to catch every single private conversation. Of course, I speak out. Privately, in my blogs and on social media. But only bots pay attention to what anyone says today. The mass surveillance bots.
I concluded that my strongest potential contribution to a better, freer world is to release DarkSpeak. Just accept the risks and do it anyway.
I have spent some time over the last few weeks getting the project going again. It's now usable (not slick - I'm not a designer) to play with, chat and exchange files.
I once wrote a program called warftp. It was an FTP server for Windows back in the stone age. It had a number of features that people really liked - and I plan to implement some of them in DarkSpeak. Actually, I have lots of ideas that can make the app into a little underground social network. But for now it's just a P2P Instant Messenger that tries to be as secure as it can be.