Censorship – The Bachchao Project

[Event Report] India, Lets build the list 2025

July 31, 2025

In June 2025, The Bachchao Project and OONI reviewed the list of websites used for monitoring website censorship in India. This is part of our efforts as a collective to build robust civil society engagement in monitoring internet access in India. As part of this event, we invited a small group of experts and practitioners to join us for a series of workshops focused on updating specific categories of websites tested for censorship in India.

Test lists are publicly curated lists of websites that are tested for censorship by OONI Probe and tools developed by other projects, such as Censored Planet. These lists include a wide range of different types of websites based on 30 standardized categories (such as news media, political criticism, and human rights content).

The India-specific test list is hosted here: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/blob/master/lists/in.csv

While test lists usually include some websites that are known to be blocked, many sites are not censored locally when they are added to test lists. By updating the test lists, we aim to discover website censorship (by identifying the blocking of sites that were previously accessible), not only to confirm it.

Though the lists are public and can (and should) be updated by anyone who has an interest in doing so, the review of the list requires an understanding of socio-political and economic issues and the current digital landscape to understand which websites host important information. We used OONI’s and Netalitica’s documentation to guide us through the event.

Previously, the Indian test list was reviewed back in 2021, and you can read a detailed report about this update here. Since 2021, India has witnessed a variety of social, political, and legal changes affecting the local digital landscape.

The COVID pandemic of 2020 – 2022 introduced new digital services and platforms and encouraged citizens to use online platforms daily. Access to online platforms and services became a necessity. This encouraged the development of payment, information, and identity verification services by private players. Some of these efforts brought forward questions of trust and politics in technology platforms.

The usage of digital platforms in daily life has also made digital platforms a more prominent means of sharing information. The regulation of social media platforms and new media platforms changed due to these increased interactions.

India witnessed various political movements during this time. Most of the movements were as a result of policy changes and political decisions undertaken by the ruling government. For example, the introduction of the Farm Bill (in 2019 and 2021), through which the government claims to introduce reforms in agricultural businesses. Similarly introduction of CAA/NRC Act in 2019, the abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir in 2019 and 2020 also invited major political debates.

India also has a current ongoing conflict in the State of Manipur and cross-border tensions with its neighboring countries of China and Pakistan.

The government has also introduced three new criminal laws, Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Sakshaya Act, and Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha. These Acts are intended to replace the existing Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, and Evidence Act.

These changes have had an effect on information regulation, policies, and information control practices. Today, access to information is actively restricted and regulated by the government and courts based on the existing laws. Sometimes the access to information is also influenced by the telecom operators and other nation states’ policies.

The ultimate goal of this series of workshops was to edit the existing test list to improve the monitoring of website censorship in India. As part of this effort, we aimed to:

Add the websites that may be considered important (by users) for monitoring;
Update the existing entries and remove the inactive, outdated, or irrelevant websites from testing;
Provide additional context about the existing and new entries for future research purposes.

On 21st and 22nd June 2025, we hosted 5 thematic working groups that reviewed and updated 22 categories of tested websites (out of 30). We organised 22 categories in 5 thematic groups. Below are some of our observations for the thematic groups. In these observations, we also talk about the categories and factors we considered for these groups.

Working Group 1: Gender and Sexual Information

The categories included in this thematic section were LGBTQ (LGBT), Sex Education (SEX), Online Dating (DATE), and Pornographic Content (PORN).

India has been actively regulating pornographic content online. There have been several government and court orders to ban porn websites. 63 porn websites were blocked in 2022. The ban of porn websites has been an ongoing effort, not necessarily a new trend we observed. For example, Uttarkhand Court mandated ISPs to enforce a porn ban in 2018. Previous government orders took down different websites, including Porn Hub. While updating the list, we observed that despite bans, some of these sites remain accessible on certain networks. Some of them have circumvented the bans by moving their websites to the new domains.

Social media platforms and other communication platforms are more widely used now to share cases of sexual abuse in the country. Sometimes, they are also used to circulate videos shaming the survivors and victims of the abuse. For more prominent cases, courts have been issuing take-down orders. For example, orders requiring taking down the content from social media platforms followed the circulation of the rape videos of the Kuki-Zo women from Manipur and the publication of the identity information of the RG Kar Medical College Rape Victim. These events have also increased the scrutiny on pornographic material online, including the Supreme Court stepping in and asking the social media and OTT platforms to have stringent screening for pornographic materials.

The border tensions between India and China have prompted India to be critical and reduce trust in technology built by Chinese companies. Many dating apps that were reportedly built by China were blocked during the Indo-China conflict, including various Asian and LGBTQ dating platforms.

In the whitelist issued by the government during the internet shutdown in Kashmir, websites related to Sexual Health and Education, Dating and Matrimonial sites were not included. This indicates that they were not considered a priority in terms of access to technology platforms.

Working Group 2: Environment-related Information

This section included only the Environment (ENV) category.

The ruling government introduced farm bills to regulate the markets that sell farmers’ products. This bill resulted in large protests across the country. During these protests of 2019 & 2021, the Kisan Manch Facebook page was reportedly taken down, and access to it was restored after the protests ended. Reports point to the removal of several X (formerly known as Twitter) accounts on governmental orders. Kisan Ekta Morcha claimed that a lot of accounts connected with them were blocked.

The Caravan, a leading long-form news platform’s website, which was covering these events in depth, was also reportedly temporarily blocked on X/Twitter. Websites of citizen action groups like Fridays for Futures and There is No Earth B were also reported to be blocked.

The regulation around civil society was experiencing changes in 2010 with the amendment of the FCRA rule, which made fundraising harder. The change of government in 2014 also prompted more changes in this direction, increasing the challenges for civil society. Leaked intelligence reports blamed groups like Greenpeace and others for causing a loss of revenue for the country (because their evidentiary and awareness-building work caused public scrutiny and legal roadblocks for industry and state projects).

Working Group 3: Health Information

The categories included in this thematic section were Public Health (PUBH), Sex Education (SEX), and Alcohol and Drugs (ALDR).

With COVID, health information became more accessible through social media platforms and other websites. This has also led to the spread of misinformation and questioning of health information shared online.

The X/Twitter account of ‘The Liver Doc ’, a doctor sharing health-related information on X/Twitter, was suspended in India after an ex parte judgement from the Bangalore Civil Court on 28th September 2023 due to the case filed by a major pharma company. His account was restored by the Karnataka High Court on October 14th, 2023.

On 10th August 2023, the central government released Guidelines for Health and Wellness Celebrities and Influencers as a step towards ensuring accountability over health claims and misinformation that could be harmful to the public interest. This can be seen in light of widespread misinformation about vaccinations and health protocols in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Following these guidelines Delhi High Court ordered the take-down of the Instagram video and LinkedIn post by Mr Prashant Desai on 26th September 2024 because of the criticism of certain “health drinks”.

Working Group 4: Technology Infrastructure

The categories included in this thematic section were Search Engines (SRCH), Communication Tools (COMT), File Sharing (FILE), Media Sharing (MMED), E-commerce (COMM), Gaming (GAME), Hacking tools (HACK), and Anonymization and Circumvention Tools (ANON).

The reduced trust of the Government of India in the Chinese-funded/built applications led to about 220 applications being removed from the Indian app stores in 2020. Several of these applications were file-sharing, communication, and media-sharing apps. The list also included some payment platforms and some dating applications, making their services inaccessible for customers.

Several video streaming platforms have been ordered to be blocked under copyright infringement cases filed by popular channels and production companies such as Star Entertainment, Sony Entertainment, and other organisations. A lot of these platforms were reported to have violated copyright rules. We observed that these platforms, though temporarily unavailable, ended up coming back online in different forms over time. The government and courts have been pushing for stricter blocking, which would probably make these domains inaccessible in the future.

CERT-In released a set of directions for VPN Service Providers with users in India to store information about their customers’ IP addresses and logs along with other information for a period of 5 years. Since the VPN services are advertised to provide privacy to their users, this directive was criticized by major VPN providers. The government of India also later on went on to ban some of the VPN Services.

The States of Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir have experienced long-term internet outages. In both these shutdowns, the restoration of internet connection has involved an undertaking from internet users. This undertaking prohibits tethering and the usage of VPN Apps.

The Government of India introduced the IT rules amendment for gaming websites and Intermediaries in April 2023. It mandates and holds intermediaries responsible for the games and information hosted on their sites. It warns of a ban for games that violate the rules. This enables the requirement of KYC for games that involve money transactions.

In 2025, 25 betting apps and at least 100 websites were reportedly blocked for violating the rules. Most of these apps and websites were blocked for illegal and unregulated gambling.

India released the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules in 2025. In the past decade, several services, including government welfare schemes, have collected large amounts of data. At that time, there was no clear regulation on how this data should be stored or could be used. Some platforms attempted to provide services using this data, but since 2025, the Government of India has restricted the usage of Aadhar (digital ID) for identity verification by private platforms.

Indian Meteorological Data, which was freely accessible before, is now restricted and paywalled. This has also affected platforms that used this data to inform users.

Working Group 5: Information and Human Rights

The categories included in this thematic section were Human Rights (HUMR), News Media (NEWS), Hosting and Blogging Platforms (HOST), Political Criticism (POLR), and Religion (REL).

Over the last 5 years, many news media organizations have been blocked. The censorship has also affected the social media platforms, for example, Savala Vada, a platform hosting political cartoons and satire, experienced the take-down of their Instagram account.

During recent cross-border tensions with Pakistan, multiple YouTube channels were blocked. X/Twitter profiles of Maktoob Media, The Kashmiriyat, and Free Press Kashmir were blocked during border tensions between India and Pakistan, and another 8000 profiles were requested to be blocked. Some Turkish websites and brands were also reportedly impacted by censorship during the tensions between India and Pakistan.

We also observed several political parties increasing their online presence. Most political parties have upgraded to better top-level domains. But a lot of them still lacked a secure certificate (likely due to the usage of National Indian Root CA).

The table below shares an overview of the changes and updates to the list contributed by the community members during the two-day workshop

Code	Category Description	New URLs	Updated to HTTPS	Moved to Global list	Recommended for deletion	Domain Updated	Category updated
REL	Religion	7	0	0	2	0	3
HOST	Hosting and Blogging Platforms	0	0	0	1	2	0
NEWS	News Media	10	6	1	23	20	0
POLR	Political Criticism	2	10	0	11	16	0
HUMR	Human Rights Issues	37	9	1	6	7	0
COMM	E-commerce	2	1	0	10	1	0
FILE	File-sharing	2	4	0	20	4	1
MMED	Media sharing	4	0	1	15	2	0
SRCH	Search Engines	2	0	0	0	0	0
COMT	Communication Tools	1	0	0	3	1	0
HACK	Hacking Tools	0	0	0	1	0	0
GAME	Gaming	1	1	0	3	0	0
ANON	Anonymization and circumvention tools	4	0	0	0	1	0
GMB	Gambling	15	0	0	0	0	0
PUBH	Public Health	24	0	0	5	4	1
ALDR	Alcohol & Drugs	0	0	0	1	1	0
ENV	Environment	21	2	0	3	2	1
GOVT	Government	1	0	0	0	0	0
XED	Sex Education	17	1	0	1	1	0
PORN	Pornography	4	1	0	3	1	0
DATE	Online Dating	3	0	1	1	1	0
LGBT	LGBT	25	4	0	7	1	1
	Total	182	39	4	116	65	7

The pull request for this update can be found here : https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/1983
We hope that this effort encourage more people to engage in these sort of open source list building and testing activities. We also hope that the new information helps with better and updated understanding of website access in India.

Navigating workflows amidst internet disruptions in a news room

June 26, 2024

The Bachchao Project supported EastMojo to build this guide on how news rooms can navigate workflows especially in North East India. The guide which was completed in 2023 is released under CC-BY-SA-NC here. It speaks in depth about how can a news room prepare for an internet shutdown, dos and donts while reporting and East Mojos self reflection on reporting during internet shutdowns in Manipur in 2023.

Navigating workflows amidst internet disruptions in a newsroom

Digital Rights in Northeast India – Cyber Democracy Season 3

December 28, 2022

In 2021-22, we co-produced the cyber democracy season 3 with Suno India and Makepeace Sitlhou, looking at digital rights in the north east of India under . The season containing four podcasts was released in early 2022.

The podcast series had speakers such as Veteran Journalist Patricia Mukhim, Journalist Kishorchandra Wangkhem, Activist Nonibala Narengbam, Educationist Kopele Mero,National security expert Bibhu Prasad Routray, Investigative journalist Paojel Chaoba, Political activist Angellica Aribram and Social activist Angela Rangad. In this introductory series we looked at the issues of Surveillance, Internet Shutdowns, Online Harassment and Censorship in the context of the North East.
Each episode speaks about the issues that are based on experiences of the speakers and attempts to showcase the realities on ground.

Ep 1 Criminalising thoughts on Facebook
In this episode we look at the complexities of using social media platforms for information sharing and dissent in the North East. We look at freedom of expressions and its tradeoffs from this lens.

Ep2 Coming home to barbs and brickbats
In this episode we look at the experiences of online attacks and harassment faced people of the North East India as a result of being unapologetically themselves and asserting their identities.

Ep3 Internet shutdowns in “digital” Northeast India
In this episode we look at the issues of internet access and internet shutdowns and how it creates inequalities.

Ep4 Pegasus and us – Nothing New for Indias Northeast
In this episode we look at new age surveillance and what does it mean to Indias Northeast

The podcasts are released under CC-BY-SA 4.0 . For usage of these podcasts please write to theteam@thebachchaoproject.org

[Event Report] India, Lets build the list

December 1, 2021

The Bachchao Project in partnership with OONI hosted an online event on 9th and 10th October 2021 to update the Citizen Lab test list for India. The event, which was called “India, Lets build the list”, was organised to help strengthen community based monitoring of internet censorship in India. The event allowed experts from different fields to contribute to a curated list of websites that are relevant to India and which are regularly tested for censorship by volunteers in India.

Censorship in India, specifically online, has been evolving steadily since the notification of the Information Technology Act of of 2000 and its associated rules. Though the Act itself offers multiple ways in which the Government can remove content and/or block access to content (including shutting down internet services), very little data is available to confirm if due process is regularly followed in these matters. This raises serious concerns about its impact on Indian citizens’ right to freedom of expression and access to information.

While many such blocked sites may fall in the expected categories of illegal streaming, adult content, file sharing etc., research has also shown that internet censorship in India also impacts a wide variety of other sites, such as news media and human rights sites.This list building and monitoring activity is therefore crucial for us as citizens and as a community of digtal rights practioners to safeguard the essence of a free internet and uphold the rule of law.

One open software project that aims to increase transparency of internet censorship (and other forms of network interference) around the world is Open Observatory of Network Interface (OONI). To this end, the project builds free and open source software – called OONI Probe – designed to measure various forms of network interference.

A recent study used the OONI Probe testing software to measure the blocking of websites in various states in India (such as Manipur and Bangalore) from January 2019 to January 2020. It found that while 136 sites from the Citizen Lab test list for India were confirmed to be blocked, the major decrepancies in access were between ISPs rather than between regions. A large number of media outlets seemed to be targeted for blocking as well.

As of now, a relatively small community in India reviews and contributes to the Citizen Lab test list for India, which means that it’s entirely possible that we are not looking at all the possible thematic areas in which website censorship may be happening.

It therefore becomes essential that more people from varied backgrounds and fields of interest support such open source testing for censorship. By reviewing and contributing to the the Citizen Lab test list for India, you can help ensure that a broad range of relevant websites are tested, and that the censorship measurement data collected from the testing of these websites is more comprehensive, robust, and timely. This will enable citizens to ask important questions to lawmakers and even mount legal challenges when necessary.

To this end, on Day 1 of our 2-day workshop, our OONI partners facilitated a session (“Introduction to Internet censorship”) which introduced participants to key concepts around internet censorship and how website censorship is implemented, with the goal of ultimately highlighting the importance of contributing to the Citizen Lab lists of websites that are measured for internet censorship. For the purposes of this workshop, the following forms of censorship were kept out of our scope:

Censorship on social media platforms
Internet outages/blackouts/shutdowns
Takedown requests
Online trolling
Self-censorship

We used these two days to specifically look at websites that may have been or could be at risk of being blocked by Internet Service Providers (ISPs) . The group discussed the recent history of internet censorship specifically related to blocking of sites under Section 69 (A) and Section 79 of the IT Act . We also reviewed existing research and public advocacy efforts with regards to internet censorship in India.

The concept of the Citizen Lab Global Test List and India Test List, both hosted on Github, was introduced to the group. These lists are compiled and maintained as a voluntary global effort to monitor website censorship. The India test list has over 600 URLs which fall under many of the Citizen Lab’s 30 standardized categories.

A review of this list showed that the list was not balanced in terms of URLs in each category. The list also needed an update based on recent events in the country. Our workshop was specifically aimed at rectifying this and making the list more comprehensive & inclusive of the myriad concerns of citizens of our country.

A few of the participants shared their own experience with state censorship and their work on these issues. One of them presented a list that they had compiled by testing for DNS hijacking of sites specifically on the ACT Fibernet. Another participant found that many official government websites are not accessible to people outside the nation and shared their own work on creating a proxy to allow researchers and others to access Indian government websites from other countries.Geo-blocking prevents archival by the Internet Archive, which many researchers depend on. Participants also shared their experience of studying the issue of internet access in conflict zones in India and that even though access to the internet is recognized as a human right, it is often on the very bottom of the priority list for communities who are facing very intense threats on the ground. They also shared that being able to help these communities understand that the role the internet can play in responding to some of the other threats they face (and the tools to enable this, while foregrounding their safety needs) had been a very positive, empowering experience for all involved.

To end Day 1, we dove into the methodology of list building and list pruning which was developed and presented to the group by our friends at Netallitica. This session was specifically aimed to prepare us for Day 2 during which we (the organizers and the attendees) split into groups and co-worked on updating the India test list.

We started Day 2 with practical inputs on how to make changes to this list, important points to remember so that anyone who looks at this list later to test or to clean it understands what changes have been made and why. Our partners from OONI also showcased their beta tool which will make updating the Citizen Lab test lists much easier (through a web platform, without requiring GitHub accounts), once it’s launched.

A total of 10 participants split into two online co-working groups and selected a single theme to work on for 30-minute hands-on sessions each. The participants selected themes based on their area of knowledge and interest and also on how much information the list for that theme already contained. The focus was to make each theme list cover a wider base making it representative of platforms/ sources of information/ interaction that are currently important in our country.

In each group there were discussions to decide which sites need to be added and/or removed, and how websites should be categorized . An important part of this exercise was to ensure that we are including sites that cater to various schools of thought so that the list is not skewed in its representation. This is important to do so that we can measure censorship across the board and not only of target sites that may be important to the world view of the people building and testing these lists.

Day 2 of the workshop resulted in the follow changes to the India test list :

Category Code (Name)	New URLs added	Updated to HTTPS	Recommended for deletion	Domain Updated	Category Updated
ECommerce	7	1	3	1	0
LGBT	15	0	1	0	0
Human Rights	8	0	0	0	0
Environment	31	1	0	0	1
Public Health	26	1	1	0	0
News Media	11	0	0	0	0
Terrorism & Militancy	0	0	1	0	0
Culture	19	1	0	1	1
Hate Speech	0	0	0	0	0
Political Criticism	4	0	1	0	1
Government	1	0	0	0	0
Pornography	5	0	0	0	0
Total	127	4	7	2	3

The participants were able to significantly add to the categories of LGBT, Environment , Culture and Public Health which were very sparsely polluted earlier.

Accomplishing this took time and effort to ensure no sites were repeated, URLs were added correctly, and that existing URLs in the list were still relevant. Our workshop focused specifically on contributing new URLs and we did not specifically set out to prune the existing list (though some of us took the initiative to look at this aspect too). Here is the pull request for this update: https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/864

At the end of workshop, participants and us as organizers were enthused by the amount of understanding built about the importance of community based monitoring of internet censorship and a huge role that people from all walks of like can (and in our opinion, should) play to help technologists and digital rights advocates around the world to stand guard over a free Internet.

We hope that this effort will give impetus to more people to engage in these sort of open source list building and testing activities that will enable the generation of in-depth and representative data on the true nature of the Internet that citizens in India get to experience.