Governments that deploy internet shutdowns to thwart protesters have struggled to clamp down on offline messaging apps. India’s recent response to Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat suggests that battle is entering a new phase.

Bitchat, launched by the Twitter co-founder in 2025, allows nearby phones to communicate over Bluetooth even when mobile networks or internet access are unavailable. Last month, the app had its biggest real-world test after authorities shut down internet access during student protests in New Delhi.

As protesters turned to Bitchat, the Indian government tried to block access to the app’s source code on GitHub, a Microsoft-owned platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. In the past, the Indian government has blocked apps from official app stores due to various reasons, but digital rights advocates say this appears to be the first known attempt to geoblock an open-source software repository.

The episode highlights a growing challenge for governments.

Across the globe, state-enforced internet blackouts have become a primary weapon against protests and independent journalism during political crises. Beyond silencing dissent, these measures serve to block real-time documentation and evade international scrutiny of official misconduct.

Apps built to function without the internet make those tactics less effective.

“The decentralized architecture of the app means that there is no central server or database and therefore there cannot be a central kill switch,” Namrata Maheshwari, senior policy counsel and encryption policy lead at digital civil rights nonprofit Access Now, told Rest of World. “Downloaded apps will continue to work as long as they are within the physical proximity required for the mesh network to function.”

Bitchat reached an all-time high of 430,000 daily active users in India on July 26, according to market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Between July 20 and July 26, India accounted for 74% of the app’s global downloads.

Apps like Bitchat

Offline messaging apps are not new.

During Hong Kong’s 2014 protests, FireChat became a popular way for demonstrators to communicate without mobile networks. More recently, Bitchat downloads spiked during protests in Myanmar, Nepal, Uganda, Madagascar, and Iran. The app also reached the top of Apple’s App Store in Jamaica amid power outages during a hurricane last year.

India’s response, however, went beyond targeting the app itself. 

On July 23, the government directed GitHub to disable access to three Bitchat repositories in India within three hours.

The government of India does not like technologies like Bitchat.”

“The government of India does not like technologies like Bitchat and wants it taken down,” Jack Dorsey posted on X on July 24, sharing the government order.

Blocking an entire platform this way is neither necessary nor proportionate, Access Now’s Maheshwari told Rest of World.

“If the mere possibility of a technology being misused sufficed to block it entirely, we would have no email services or search engines or AI chatbots or even Microsoft Office for that matter,” Maheshwari said. “Anonymous communication and decentralized architecture, like the one Bitchat uses, are not unlawful, and are in fact essential for privacy and autonomy.”

She said that reliable connectivity during unrest allows people to communicate with family, document events, access emergency services, and avoid misinformation. 

Ironically, the government’s order appears to have boosted the app’s visibility.

“Without that notice going to GitHub, and then eventually to Bitchat, and Jack Dorsey tweeting it out, it would have stayed within the tech policy circle,” Prateek Waghre, Bengaluru-based tech policy expert, told Rest of World. “It would not have become a larger conversation — but it did, and because of that, I think a lot of people probably downloaded it.”

At the time of publication, the repositories remained accessible in India and had also been mirrored on decentralized platforms including Radicle and GitLawb, making them harder to remove entirely.

The clash over Bitchat comes as India — home to the world’s second-largest internet user base — has increasingly challenged the design of communication platforms rather than just the content they carry.

In recent months, India has clamped down on apps for their inherent design, testing the boundaries of platform-wide restrictions. In June, the government temporarily banned encrypted messaging app Telegram for a week, and the following month, it stalled the rollout of WhatsApp’s username feature, citing threats of impersonation and fraud.

“Just because you don’t like what the platform is doing as a function, can you use that as a reason for intervention?” Waghre said. “That can be taken to an absurd end. Anything that enables communication can be used by two people to communicate something that’s illegal. So where do you really draw the line on that?”