Amazon Sidewalk
I do research on mesh networking, and the response to Sidewalk in the tech community has been pretty discouraging. People have rightly brought up Apple&#x27;s Find My network as a similar application; companies are leveraging existing, ubiquitous devices to create additional network transport layers. See also, the proliferation and adoption of the Thread protocol.<p>This doesn&#x27;t mean we <i>have</i> to use these networks! But this is one of the first, easiest steps to make progress towards ubiquitous, decentralized connectivity. I understand that not everyone trusts Amazon with their private data, but do you trust Verizon or Comcast more? I don&#x27;t!<p>If there are multiple, competing standards that offer heterogeneous connectivity options, we&#x27;ll be (relatively) much closer to resilient, censorship-resistant communication infrastructure than we are now. Like TCP&#x2F;UDP, there are methods to guard the contents of a message on mesh networks as well.<p>Finally, for those who think that it would be better to maintain centralized, monopolistic infrastructure and legislate privacy through legal means instead, I would argue that the arc of government is long, and bends toward control &amp; surveillance. If a government is the only barrier between users and total control of information flow, then if that government wavers in their commitment, regaining the previous level of freedom is very difficult without the ability to communicate freely.