Apple and Google's app stores are the next battleground for protests

On October 3, Jack Dorsey's Bitchat disappeared from Apple's App Store in India after the IT ministry demanded its removal. It vanished from Google Play too. Bitchat lets phones pass messages over Bluetooth, with no internet needed. That made it a lifeline in July, when the government switched off mobile internet around Delhi's Jantar Mantar during student protests. In one week, India accounted for 85% of the app's global downloads.

Even an order to pull its code off GitHub didn't stop it spreading.

So the government went after the app stores.

In this episode, host Snigdha Sharma looks at the technology protesters reach for when the internet goes dark, and how governments are learning to keep up.

Tune in.

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This episode was edited by Arnav Prakash

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