Cryptocurrency

India Orders GitHub to Pull Dorsey’s Bitchat—Protesters Keep Downloading

India's I4C gave GitHub three hours to disable three Bitchat repos as protesters use Dorsey's Bluetooth mesh app to beat internet shutdowns in New Delhi.

India has ordered GitHub to take down the repositories behind Bitchat, the offline messaging app released by Jack Dorsey, as anti-government protesters use it to communicate through internet blackouts, CoinDesk reported Friday.

The order came late Thursday from the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Centre (I4C), part of the Home Ministry, under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act. It named three GitHub repositories tied to Bitchat and gave the Microsoft-owned platform three hours to disable access, according to the takedown notice reviewed by CoinDesk.

The notice argues the app’s design itself is the problem: Bitchat’s architecture “significantly impedes lawful interception, attribution, and investigation by law enforcement agencies,” it states. Dorsey responded on X: “the government of india does not like technologies like bitchat and wants it taken down.”

Why India wants Bitchat off GitHub

Bitchat, which Dorsey released as open source in July 2025, relays end-to-end encrypted messages between phones over Bluetooth mesh networks—no internet, no servers, no phone numbers, no accounts. It can even pass signed bitcoin transactions from phone to phone until one reaches a connected device that broadcasts them, per CoinDesk.

That architecture collides with India’s protest moment. Since July 20, large demonstrations have swept Indian cities, with student protesters rallying under the ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ banner—a jab at the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party—over a national exam scandal, met with tear gas and baton charges, CoinDesk reported. Authorities have repeatedly ordered internet shutdowns around protest sites in New Delhi, and researchers have documented protesters turning to Bluetooth mesh apps including Bitchat.

The takedown’s effectiveness is questionable. CoinDesk could still download Bitchat from both Google and Apple app stores as of Friday afternoon in Asia, and open-source code is routinely mirrored beyond any single platform’s reach. GitHub has previously removed repositories in India in response to legal orders—the recurring pattern when a jurisdiction targets code, familiar from India’s earlier move to block Polymarket and Kalshi nationwide.

Censorship-resistant tools meet state power

The confrontation is a live test of whether decentralized communication tools can be suppressed at the distribution layer. Taking a repository off GitHub does not delete the protocol, the installed apps, or the mirrors—but it raises friction for new users at exactly the moment adoption spikes.

For Dorsey, the fight lands squarely on brand. His company Block has spent years funding censorship-resistant infrastructure, from Bitcoin tooling to open protocols—the same ethos behind Goose, the free open-source coding agent Frontierbeat covered when Block released it.

What happens next depends on Microsoft’s compliance calculus and the protests’ trajectory. As of publication, GitHub had not said publicly whether it complied with the three-hour deadline, and the app remained downloadable in India, per CoinDesk.

FAQ

What is Bitchat and how does it work?

Bitchat is an open-source messaging app released by Jack Dorsey in July 2025 that relays encrypted messages phone-to-phone over Bluetooth mesh networks—no internet, servers, phone numbers or accounts—and can even pass bitcoin transactions offline.

Why did India order the GitHub takedown?

The I4C’s notice, issued under Section 79(3)(b) of the IT Act amid protests and internet shutdowns, says the app’s architecture significantly impedes lawful interception, attribution and investigation by law enforcement.

Did the takedown actually remove Bitchat?

Not in practice—CoinDesk could still download the app from Google and Apple stores in India on Friday, and open-source code is typically mirrored beyond GitHub’s reach.