India Orders GitHub to Restrict Jack Dorsey’s Bitchat During Delhi Protests
India’s cybercrime authorities ordered GitHub to disable access to repositories for Jack Dorsey’s offline Bitchat messaging app as mobile-data shutdowns accompanied protests in Delhi, turning the Bitcoin-adjacent freedom-tech project into another 2026 censorship flashpoint.
Late on July 23, India’s cybercrime authorities issued an order directing GitHub to restrict repositories hosting Bitchat, the offline messaging application associated with Jack Dorsey. The action became public the next day when Dorsey shared the notice. Indian reporting placed the order against a backdrop of repeated mobile-data suspensions during student protests in central Delhi, where mesh-style communication tools attracted attention because they could continue operating without ordinary internet connectivity.
Bitchat is not Bitcoin software, so its inclusion depends on cultural and historical connection rather than protocol mechanics. By mid-2026, the application had become a recurring “freedom technology” character around censorship, protest communication, and state attempts to control decentralized tools. Dorsey’s public identity connected those debates to Bitcoin’s broader culture of censorship resistance and infrastructure that minimizes reliance on central intermediaries.
The Indian action also gained significance through recurrence. Earlier 2026 controversies in other jurisdictions had already placed Bitchat inside debates over protest communication and state control. July therefore represented more than a one-off takedown request: it showed how adjacent decentralized communications technology was repeatedly colliding with governments in the same historical period that Bitcoin institutions were increasingly framing themselves around privacy and freedom technology.