Statement : The removal of BitChat from the India App Store is unconstitutional. Section 69A permits the blocking of unlawful information, not of a messenger for working during internet shutdowns.
New Delhi, 3 October 2026
An Apple App Review notice published today by Jack Dorsey on X records that BitChat has been removed from the India App Store "per demand from the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology", issued under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, 2000, on the ground that the application "includes content that is illegal in India". The notice adds that BitChat's TestFlight builds are no longer available for testing in India. It does not identify the content said to be illegal or the ground under Section 69A invoked. The blocking order has not been published. The Internet Freedom Foundation condemns the order and calls for its immediate publication and withdrawal.
BitChat relays end-to-end encrypted messages between nearby phones over Bluetooth mesh. It has no servers and hosts no content of its own. What travels through it is the private speech of its users, so the claim that the application "includes" illegal content is incoherent. The State's actual objection stands recorded in the notices the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre issued on 23 July 2026 to GitHub, Google and Apple against BitChat, Briar and Bridgefy which stated that such applications work even during internet shutdowns and hamper lawful interception, attribution and traceability. Those notices, issued under Section 79(3)(b) were reportedly withdrawn after public disclosure. The same end has now been pursued through Section 69A. The objection is to capability of an application, not to content it transmits. A citizen's ability to speak to another citizen while the State has switched the internet off is not a ground of restriction under Section 69A or Article 19(2) of the Constitution.
Section 69A survived constitutional scrutiny in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India (2015) because of its safeguards which included the need for a reasoned, recorded order, committee review, and a hearing to the originator under Rule 8 of the Blocking Rules, 2009, which the Delhi High Court enforced in Tanul Thakur v. Union of India (2022). Further, Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India (2020) requires that orders restricting fundamental rights be published and adopt the least restrictive measure. However, it appears in this instance, each safeguard has been evaded. A secret order blocking an entire application, rather than any identified unlawful information, is the most restrictive and disproprotionate measure available. Further, the confidentiality claimed under Rule 16 cannot defeat the right to challenge an order, and the constitutionality of this blocking regime is itself pending consideration before the Supreme Court.
While removal from the App Store does not delete BitChat from phones, it stops new downloads and security updates, leaving existing users on unpatched versions, and it ends security testing in India through TestFlight. During the Jantar Mantar protests, when mobile internet was suspended and jammers were deployed, Bluetooth mesh messaging was a channel of last resort through which young people coordinated their safety. To our knowledge, Apple has removed BitChat on a government's demand in only one other country. This is in China, in April this year.
Our demands
1. MeitY must publish the blocking order, the ground invoked and the record of the committee's proceedings, and serve the developers with a copy and an opportunity of hearing.
2. The direction must be withdrawn. Any specific unlawful use must be met with targeted proceedings under due process, not the removal of a communications tool for everyone.
3. Apple must disclose the demand in its transparency reporting and notify its users in India, and must state whether parallel directions have been received in respect of other app stores.
4. The secrecy of the blocking regime must end. The Blocking Rules, 2009 should be amended to require publication of orders and notice to originators, without awaiting the outcome of the pending constitutional challenge.
The Internet Freedom Foundation will file applications under the Right to Information Act seeking a copy of the order, and stands ready to assist the developers and affected users in India.
अभी थोड़े देर पहले ये आदमी ताज होटल से 5000 का खाना खाकर बिना बिल दिए निकल गया। बस जाते-जाते वेटर को 100 रुपया टिप दिया, वो खुद गाड़ी तक छोड़ने आया और बोला दोस्ती बनी रहे चंद्रा जी, फिर आइए खाने हमारा लवड़ेन भोज्यम।
अर्नब हमें pervert बोल रहे थे! मैने उनके चैनल की रिपोर्टिंग दिखाई जहां मेलोनी और मोदी के गले मिलने पर लिखा गया:
"जयशंकर उस पूरे ग्रुप की तरह है जो कॉलेज में अपने दोस्त को उसकी क्रश से बात करते हुए देख रहा हो"
अर्नब जी Pervert कौन हुआ और delete क्यों किया अपनी उस sexist news को? मेरे पास आपके उस Sexist News की pdf है।
Who is writing his speeches?
He is blatantly manipulating the data to fool his Andbhakts into believing he has pulled off a miracle.
The Claim: “In 2009–10, only 1.5 lakh electric vehicles were sold in India, compared to 25 lakh in 2025–26.”
Fact 1: Global EV sales were only around 6,000 units in 2009 and 12,500 units in 2010 worldwide. (Source: International Energy Agency)
Fact 2: NITI Aayog’s own reports show that even in 2016, India’s EV sales stood at just 50,000 units, mostly e-rickshaws.
Fact 3: Official VAHAN portal data proves that registered EV sales in India didn't cross the 1-lakh mark until 2021–22.
You cannot compare an era when the technology barely existed globally to today's mass commercialization and falsely claim it as a miracle.
Aap chronology samajh lijiye.
July 29:
"Show us the order proving Shah ordered firing" —Rijiju
"Shah couldn't have ordered firing; only a magistrate can" —Jitendra Singh
"There was no firing" —Piyush Goyal
August 7:
"You can't dictate that Shah must appear" —Rijiju
"The day the discussion begins here, and when Amit Shah responds, you won't be able to sit through it" —Rijiju
August 8:
"Shah is in Parliament every day" —Rijiju
August 12:
"Fine. Let's have a discussion. Start at 3 pm. I will personally sit there and answer everything for 24 hours" —Amit Shah
August 13:
Amit Shah in the front row, next to Modi.
This was the first time Shah entered the Lok Sabha during this entire 18-day session!
Speaker Om Birla entered the House.
Instead of taking up the promised discussion, the House first proceeded with the national song, Vande Mataram.
All six stanzas were rendered.
Members, including Modi and Shah, stood.
And immediately after it ended, Birla announced that the House was adjourned sine die.
As they say, patriotism is the last refuge...
Before you upload your selfie to Har Ghar Tiranga this Independence Day, know the risks.
Your photo goes into a public gallery, visible to anyone against your name, alongside a certificate. To upload it, you hand over your mobile number & OTP, on a site reportedly built by a private company and hosted on AWS, with a privacy policy that falls seriously short.
The state gets goodwill. You carry the risk of a breach. We're filing an RTI and writing to the Ministry of Culture. Share this so others know before they participate.
#HarGharTiranga #DigitalRights
Hi Vijay, one of the first things I did even when I was in Court today, was check whether there was a network shutdown in Jharkhand and ask my colleagues to prepare a statement. If you can point us to a legal order, official direction, or credible report confirming one, @internetfreedom will act on it. The same applies if facial recognition technology is being deployed. We will certainly speak up and undertake advocacy.
Our safety guide for peaceful protests exists precisely because of illegal and unconstitutional state practices of this kind, including those we documented during the Jantar Mantar protests. It can easily also be applied for the protests in Ranchi and you can help share it with students there since it contains safety guidlines that are helpful even generally.
Your earlier tweets about us have contained substantial misinformation and factual inaccuracies. Given that record, we have little reason to expect good-faith engagement from you. Moreover, I genuinely do not have the time to duel it out with you. This response is therefore not really for you. It is for people who follow @internetfreedom's work and deserve an accurate account when false claims about it are circulated that over time may create risk for our operations.
You are incorrect.
There's no connection between sexuality and gender identity. A man can be gay, straight, bisexual, or otherwise, and identify as masculine, feminine, or neither.
If you wanted artistic depictions of "robust masculinity," as you say, you can always go back to J. C. Leyendecker, a German-American immigrant responsible for producing some of the best commercial art during the early 20th century. Leyendecker, who is widely believed to be gay, created "The Arrow Man" for Arrow Shirts and hundreds of The Saturday Evening Post's covers. If you're into menswear, as I am, you are undoubtedly familiar with his work, as he created much of the menswear art during that period. "Trad" corners of Twitter also often put his art forward today as representations of "traditional Western society."
Or you can check out Osmar Schindler, whose works are markedly homoerotic. See Muskelspiel (Muscle Play, 1907) and Germanic Warrior with Roman Helmet (1902), pictured in the second and third slides below. These images celebrate "robust masculinity," but there are often layers of meaning, which makes his work interesting.
What you're hinting at is a stereotype that has always been around but, in my opinion, crystallized after the trial of Oscar Wilde. In his essay "Out of the Closet," Max Mosher writes about some of this history. An excerpt:
“Pansy, Nellie, swish, queen: the fairy went by many names, but one thing universally acknowledged was that he wasn’t a ‘real man.' Sexual theories of the time suggested that homosexuals were women in men’s bodies, unnaturally devoid of masculinity. But the easily recognizable identity proved useful for lonely men desperate to find each other. Gay men flocked to the stereotype like fairies to a flame. [Later], masculine gays felt alienated from an identity that didn’t represent them; early queer activists worried that the fairy stereotype gave the community a bad name.”
In the 1970s, gay men rejected this "fairy" stereotype and embraced over-the-top representations of masculinity, often forms connected to the working-class male. In San Francisco, some of these men were known as "The Clones" or "The Castroids" (for how they would hang around Castro Street, a historically LGBTQ+ area of the city).
Moser continues: “Clones had taken the look of the working-class male and sexualized it, emphasizing muscles through tight t-shirts, and shapely buttocks through deliberately shrunken jeans. The Clone Look was, in fact, a deconstruction of the traditional male, a kind of ‘butch drag.’ By dressing like ‘real men,’ clones had discovered that masculinity was a performance with costumes no less contrived than the fairy’s tailored suits or the radical drag queens’ gowns. The Clone Look, the first style to say it was okay to be both gay and masculine, may have encouraged thousands of men to come out.”
Today, much of this aesthetic has been co-opted by the far right, as conservatives wear skin-tight Buffalo plaid shirts, stretch denim, and work boots.
Regardless, I don't care for the original image not because it depicts masculinity — which I'm totally fine with and in fact have built a career in writing about as an aesthetic — but because it's cliché.
To be sure, it's remarkable as photojournalism, as it captures the moment when Secret Service agents rushed Reagan out of the Augusta National Golf Club when someone crashed the gate and took people hostage in 1983.
But people are not necessarily reacting to that moment; they are reacting to the semiotics of the image. I find the image cliché because it's so inert and overdetermined. There are no layers to the image; people are just into the accumulation of masculine tropes in a small frame — preppy clothes (symbolizing wealth), semi-automatic weapons (violence), and a sense of urgency (ACTION!!). I find it cliché the same way I find it cliché when a certain kind of guy loves referencing the Scarface scene where Tony Montana says "say hello to my little friend." The red-carpeted mansion (wealth), shootout with semi-automatic weapons (violence), and fast-paced scene (ACTION!!) have some obvious appeal. But... it's also pretty cliché.
You are easily impressed by low quality symbols, which is perhaps why our current political moment is so exciting for you.
A tool used to rephrase plagiarised text changed "final solution" to "mass killing of an ethnic group" in a chemistry paper. Now retracted thanks to a PubPeer user who spotted this.
CJP had several hundred volunteers on 20th July wearing such neon shirts. These same police officers who are now peddling propaganda videos were beating our volunteers to pulp.
The police were beating up young girls that day Rahul ShivShankar. We never saw your handle speak for them. This is why you are called Godi media, and history will remember you as a lapdog.
She is not a criminal. She isn't carrying a weapon. She is just an Adivasi woman fighting for Jal-Jangal-Jameen and her constitutional rights.
This is how she is being treated. There are countless others facing the same. Why is nobody talking about them??
#KenBetwa#Bundelkhand