The ‘World Wide Web’ is increasingly yielding to a ‘Where Permitted Web’. The overwhelming influence of both American and Chinese companies on global communication is being felt in a conflict-ridden world. In the push for what is being termed digital sovereignty, platforms and applications now encounter bans in various countries. With conflict situations rising worldwide, American Big Tech finds its dominance threatened. We are seeing a retreat of the internet’s universal reach as countries subject their users to sovereign internets so that they can control what can be seen and said online.
If you are travelling, this can lead to piquant situations. Travelling across China last month, equipped with international roaming from an Indian service provider, one was able to access Facebook and Google, which are banned there. But in the land of TikTok, one could not access TikTok because it is banned in India.
In 2020, India banned a total of 59 Chinese apps, including TikTok and WeChat, after the Galwan clashes on the grounds of national security, sovereignty, data privacy concerns, and public order. Intelligence agencies had alleged that many of the apps collected user data and might be sending it to servers in China. TikTok still remains banned here. As does WeChat.
The prime minister spoke of digital sovereignty in his Independence Day speech this year, and of self-reliance in technology because of the disadvantages of depending on Big Tech. He urged the country’s tech talent to come up with Indian social media platforms. But this is easier said than done, with an earlier experiment, Koo, having got nowhere.
Just a month before the prime minister’s speech, in July, Microsoft responded to sanctions by the European Union against Russia by cutting off a Russia-backed oil refinery in India, Nayara, from its Azure servers. The company took Microsoft to court and turned to Rediff.com to maintain operations.
And now growing oil sanctions against Russia by the United States of America and the EU are having repercussions on Russian digital media consumers. In response to these sanctions, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, moved two months ago to shift Russians onto a State-controlled messenger app called MAX, a rival to WhatsApp, pre-installed on phones and tablets. It was announced in August and made mandatory from September 1. Simultaneously, it became mandatory for Russia’s domestic app store, RuStore, already pre-installed on all Android devices, to be pre-installed on Apple devices. MAX will be integrated with a range of government services. Going the whole hog with its State media push, the government also announced that a Russian-language television app called LIME HD TV, which allows people to watch State TV channels for free, would be pre-installed on all smart TVs sold in Russia from January 1, 2026.
Although MAX is being presented to the Russian population as a way to combat criminal activity and fraud, it does not even remotely compensate for WhatsApp and Telegram. In July, the former had a reach of 97.3 million in Russia and Telegram of 90.8 million users. As for MAX, the company says that more than 45 million people have created accounts, the equivalent of nearly a third of the country’s population, and it claims 18 million daily users.
But the State-sanctioned app can only be installed using Russian or Belarusian phone numbers, with virtual SIM cards blocked and registration from other countries not permitted. WhatsApp and Telegram offer phone connectivity to the rest of the world and end-to-end encryption of calls; MAX does not.
Voice calls on WhatsApp and Telegram are being described as restricted by Al Jazeera. Russians told The New York Times that the restrictions on voice and video calls on these platforms have created “significant hassles” because they used to help people save money on mobile plans. Russian soldiers in Ukraine reported difficulties keeping in touch with relatives at home because they could not make voice calls on these apps. People are also having to endure regular mobile internet outages imposed by Russia to thwart Ukrainian drones.
Facebook and Instagram were blocked in Russia in 2022, and Google’s services are restricted. The country has also passed a restrictive VPN law. YouTube has been tackled by slowing download speeds on computers, by up to 70%, according to one report.
Vietnam developed a successful Vietnamese-language OTT messaging platform called Zalo, which is used by 85% of the Vietnamese, without banning any of its international competition. WeChat in China has well over a billion monthly users, but the country bans Facebook, Instagram and Google.
In the US, a ban was imposed on TikTok in January this year, then lifted for short periods, with the brief extensions still continuing. Ad hocism governs the permitted use of this popular app here, much as it governs many things the current US government does.
There are blocks, bans, restrictions, slowdowns, and then there are internet takedowns. In India, last week, the government notified a further amendment to the Information Technology Act, which stipulates that intermediaries must act on unlawful content within 36 hours upon receipt of a court order or “a reasoned intimation, in writing” from an officer of joint secretary rank or above. Such content must be removed or disabled.
As far as digital access goes, we now live in an uncertain world. And that is putting it mildly.