Jack Dorsey's latest venture is learning a harsh lesson about operating in India's increasingly restrictive tech environment. According to TechCrunch, Bitchat, the Twitter co-founder's encrypted messaging app designed to work without internet, has vanished from Apple's App Store and Google Play in India after New Delhi issued a government takedown order.
Dorsey announced the move Saturday, sharing an Apple notice that cited Section 69A of India's Information Technology Act as the legal basis for the ban. Apple will keep Bitchat available globally, but Indians are now locked out, and even the app's TestFlight beta access has been restricted in the country.
This is not Bitchat's first brush with Indian authorities. In July, the government ordered GitHub to remove repositories for the open-source app, sparking outcry from digital rights advocates who questioned whether a messaging platform could be blocked simply for being too secure.
The two government orders use completely different legal justifications. The July takedown relied on intermediary liability rules; this October order invokes Section 69A, which is meant to block unlawful content, not software itself. The Internet Freedom Foundation called this latest move "unconstitutional," arguing the government is overreaching, using a law designed to censor illegal material to suppress technology that cannot be easily surveilled.
India's tech regulation strategy has grown more sophisticated. Rather than crude IP bans that simply block access, New Delhi is using different sections of the IT Act to achieve censorship objectives that might not survive direct scrutiny. The pattern signals a troubling development: governments testing the boundaries of what they can restrict under the guise of security or law enforcement.
For Dorsey, this is a warning about the limits of "decentralized" tech in centralized markets. Bitchat's power, its ability to function without internet, making it invisible to surveillance, is precisely what makes it a target for governments that view encryption and offline communication as threats to state control.
An app built to democratize communication has been censored by invoking laws designed to block harmful content. Neither Apple, Google, nor India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology responded to TechCrunch's requests for comment, leaving digital rights advocates demanding transparency about the specific "unlawful content" that justified the ban.
India's tech crackdown is now playing hardball with American entrepreneurs. Whether Dorsey fights back or walks away, building uncensorable tech in a country determined to censor it was always likely to end in a standoff.
