When the internet goes dark, most protesters just go home. This time, they switched apps instead — and now the app itself is the target.
India’s Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), under the Ministry of Home Affairs, ordered GitHub on July 23, 2026, to remove three code repositories for BitChat, a Bluetooth-based messaging app created by former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. GitHub had just three hours to comply. Dorsey posted the notice publicly on X the next morning, writing plainly that the Indian government “does not like technologies like Bitchat and wants it taken down.”
How BitChat Works
BitChat doesn’t need the internet, a phone number, or an account to function. It relays encrypted messages phone-to-phone over Bluetooth Low Energy, hopping across nearby devices to extend its reach, and falls back to the Nostr protocol when an internet connection is available. There’s no central server to shut off — which is exactly what makes it useful during a blackout, and exactly what authorities say makes it dangerous.
Why India Went After It
The order followed weeks of student-led protests at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar over alleged irregularities in the NEET exam, organized under the banner of the Cockroach Janta Party. Authorities suspended mobile internet around the protest site roughly five times since mid-July, most recently across a 1.5-kilometer radius for eight hours on July 23. Sensor Tower data cited by TechCrunch found India accounted for about 85% of BitChat’s global downloads in the days after the blackouts began — a level of adoption authorities apparently noticed.
The Legal Angle
I4C’s notice leaned on Section 79(3)(b) of India’s IT Act, arguing that BitChat’s architecture “significantly impedes lawful interception, attribution, and investigation” and creates a “substantial risk of misuse by anti-national elements.” The Internet Freedom Foundation pushed back hard, calling the order “unconstitutional and authoritarian” and noting it never identified any actual unlawful content on the app — only that the app itself couldn’t be monitored.
Why the Takedown Won’t Actually Kill It
Because BitChat is open-source and fully peer-to-peer, pulling its code from GitHub doesn’t disable a single existing installation. Anyone who already has the app keeps using it exactly as before; the order only blocks new downloads through official channels. It’s a narrower, more symbolic form of control than an outright ban — one that targets distribution rather than usage.
The Bigger Pattern
This isn’t India’s first brush with BitChat’s design. Reports also point to broader friction over decentralized tools that resist takedown, echoing earlier episodes like Apple pulling BitChat from China’s App Store at Beijing’s request. As more protest movements worldwide route around internet shutdowns using mesh networks, expect this same fight — over apps that can’t be switched off because no one controls them — to keep resurfacing.
