From TikTok And PUBG To Github And Reddit: Behind India's Internet Bans
Everyone, from local bureaucrats, to the Indian government, to the courts takes turns censoring the Internet. This piecemeal model might be even more harmful than China's "Great Firewall" because it lacks all transparency or logic.
Update: After the publication of this article, TikTok has been removed from both the iOS App Store and the Google Play store.
BENGALURU — Despite talk of ‘Digital India’, the country is steadily creeping into a heavily censored Internet that bears no small resemblance to the Great Chinese Firewall. It’s no less effective for being done in a thoughtless, piecemeal manner where dozens of agencies vie to block off parts of the Internet.
The Madras High Court ordered a ban on TikTok at the start of April, directing the central government to prohibit the download of the app. It said that the app hosts inappropriate content, including pornography, available for access to children.
It’s not wrong, but this order doesn’t seem to acknowledge the whole vast Internet out there. Why TikTok, specifically, has been called out for these elements is not addressed. The government will also have to order Google to prevent downloads—which has not been done so far as the app remains available.
“By becoming addicted to TikTok App, and similar apps, or cyber games, the future of the youngsters and mindset of the children are spoiled,” the court said in its interim order.
“Majority of the teens are playing pranks, gaffing around with duet videos and sharing with split screen to the strangers. The children who use the said application are vulnerable and may expose them to sexual predators,” the court observed.
India has a long history of Internet bans
This is just the most recent development though. According to reports, PUBG Mobile has around 50 million players in India and in just the last few months, it has seen bans in multiple Indian cities because authorities fear it will promote violence, or distract children from their studies, and 10 people in Gujarat have been arrested for playing a game on their phones.
There’s also the now long-running ‘porn’ ban, blocked by court orders to protect children. “The porn ban has just been silly because anyone can just use proxies or VPN to get around the ban entirely,” said Saravanan K, a security consultant based in Bengaluru. “It’s very low tech, and if you Google ‘how to unblock porn India’, there are literally hundreds of Indian news sites falling over themselves to teach people to do this.”
But a number of other innocuous websites are also getting banned, with little or no explanation. Reddit and Telegram are some of the sites that have been getting blocked for some months now. The blocks appear arbitrary, with some ISPs carrying them out but not all; and there is no explanation given on the reason for blocks.
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