Link: https://www.sebastopoltimes.com/p/grateful-in-graton-when-the-power?utm_source=publication-search

Article starts about GMRS but continues to discuss Meshtastic and Meshcore developments in California.

What sort of data can meshtastic and meshcore transfer?

Only text. I saw someting about images, but very small ones and not with the oficial firmware.

Thry can send emoji...

For actual data you need Reticulum

Emojis, being utf-8 mostly, are simple compared to binary.

I see. So is the use case like a mesh hosted group chat for protests etc?

The community gets split several ways, which is frustrating considering how we depend on each other. When you choose any of the other 9 available radio settings you are in an entirely different effective community. https://meshtastic.org/docs/overview/radio-settings/
Default is long-fast, but I think when I was in the Bay area last, Medium-Fast had the most nodes.
https://bayme.sh/

That's just Meshtastic.

If you want to play around with meshcore you need to flash your device differently or have more hardware. Meshcore feels more solid, tools helping you link. If you want to tinker with how far you can get a signal or research how best to improve infrastructure, meshcore is great. I particularly like the direct ping tool and the coverage estimation based on elevation maps.

Haven't tried Reticulum but I think it might be the most practical if you actually need data.

TL;DR - if lemmy and ingress had a child