[orsenthil]

An important context is, there is a large scale non-violent protest and a Gandhian fast lead by Sonam Wangchuk. https://x.com/Wangchuk66/status/2080471599237702014

Indian Government is struggling to address this issue at face. PM Modi hasn't responded to this in public. To address this, Government is taking into all sort of measures like blocking public communication and social media. Like they have done for other measures like for terrorism , control and govt lead propaganda to control the narrative.

It is interesting that they tried to do this app with a _miniscule_ usage. Usage might be so small, that they could have bothered less about it.

But since they did it, Jack Dorsey is now using his clout to share about this app and bring some light on the situation. With what we have seen with Twitter/X and not-standing up to Elon, let's just remember that Dorsey isn't champion of free speech either.

[dguest]

> Jack Dorsey is now using his clout to share about this app and bring some light on the situation

Failed attempts at censorship are the best thing that could ever happen to Bitchat: free advertising for a vibcoded and questionably secure entry in a space with plenty of competitors. As others have commented it's basically impossible to shut down an open source app by blocking the source distributor, but press is priceless.

I played around with Briar [1] for a while: it worked well, and had an option to install peer-to-peer without going through any app store, was sad to see that the authors put it in maintenance mode. It also had a security audit.

[1]: https://briarproject.org/

[upofadown]

To avoid a potential misunderstanding, the maintenance mode is intended to continue indefinitely. Briar project is not shutting down.

* https://briarproject.org/news/2026-maintenance-mode/

[vkaku]

This was a legit case for the students, who suffered the most here. Better systems need to exist, including parametric computer testing and same day results - thereby making re-examinations simpler for the affected students.

I am also aware of the attempts to bring down NEET here, which I feel isn't given the right amount of scrutiny, and showing the cracks in the system. Exam leaks have been happening in India for a long time, and it looks like better systems need to exist for preventing this.

As far as censorship goes, many people should start making SDR based chat systems for long distance relays as well ... they can make this easily today