India just ordered GitHub to remove Jack Dorsey's Bitchat in three hours. A Bluetooth mesh messaging app that works without internet. The government moved this fast because it actually works.
Three hours.
That is how long India gave GitHub to disable access to Bitchat's code before the deadline passed.
Not three days. Not a formal legal process with appeals and hearings. Three hours. Emergency speed. Because the app was being used during the CJP protests by people who needed to communicate after internet shutdowns were imposed.
Bitchat is a Bluetooth mesh network messaging app. It does not need internet. It does not need cell service. It routes messages peer to peer through nearby devices, creating a decentralized communication network that exists entirely outside of any infrastructure a government can shut down.
That is precisely why India wants it gone.
Governments impose internet shutdowns specifically to control information flow during protests and civil unrest. India has used this tool more than almost any other democracy on earth. Bitchat makes that tool obsolete.
Jack Dorsey said it directly. India does not like technologies like Bitchat and wants it taken down.
The code is open source. It is already forked hundreds of times across the internet. GitHub removing it does not erase it. It distributes it further.
This is the same dynamic that makes Bitcoin resistant to government bans. You cannot uninvent math. You cannot undownload open source code from every device that already has it.
India just gave Bitchat its most powerful marketing campaign imaginable.
Nothing makes people download an app faster than a government trying to disappear it in three hours.
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