Interview with India's Nikhil Pahwa, the founding editor of MediaNama who pushed against Facebook's Free Basics, on heavy-handed state control of the internet
and why the activist who led its righteous fight against Facebook Free Basics six years ago fears his movement is being coopted by nationalist hawks. https://onezero.medium.com/... OneZero / @ozm : “It's almost like India has China envy.” https://read.medium.com/5RRhjB6 OneZero / @ozm : .@medianama founder @nixxin spearheaded a movement called Save the Internet to pass net neutrality in India and reject Facebook's “Free Basics” proposal. Now he's watching, conflicted, as India becomes a leader in a way he didn't quite envision. https://read.medium.com/paPDgiq OneZero / @ozm : Tech policy, once a niche, has become central to India's politics. Yet it has also taken on an increasingly protectionist bent that Nikhil Pahwa worries will undermine his goal of an open, global internet in which India can be a major player. https://read.medium.com/Dcc01YV David Kaye / @davidakaye : this @WillOremus profile of @nixxin and the emerging threats of digital nationalism is excellent. it's so important to look at #India as pressure on digital rights expands there and globally. https://twitter.com/... Evelyn Douek / @evelyndouek : “Other countries are watching, Pahwa said, and responding to real problems created by dominant online platforms with policies that overreach or abandon the idea of a global internet.” https://onezero.medium.com/... Damon Beres / @dlberes : Fascinating interview with MediaNama founder Nikhil Pawha, the man who rallied India against Facebook's Free Basics program. He now fears that the country's attempts to control the internet are going too far—which... timely! by @WillOremus, tip @Techmeme https://onezero.medium.com/... Thanks: @dlberes See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Six years ago, Nikhil Pahwa's Save the Internet campaign helped India reject Facebook's Free Basics and pass net neutrality — a rare citizen-led win against a US platform giant. In this OneZero interview he argues the same state power his movement checked is now turning inward: heavy-handed control with a protectionist bent he describes as 'China envy.'
The arc since then supports his unease. Internal postings showed top Facebook India exec Ankhi Das backing Modi's party before the 2014 election (the Ankhi Das disclosures), while Koo, a regional-language microblogging service, passed 3M users fueled largely by BJP patronage (the Koo interview). Critics of the new IT rules say they hand the government even more power to stomp out dissent.
First-order effects
- Pahwa's own legacy is contested: the Save the Internet coalition that defeated Free Basics now watches its net-neutrality framing repurposed to justify state control rather than an open internet.
- US platforms operating in India — Facebook foremost among them — face a government armed with IT rules that critics say expand its power over dissent, on top of reputational damage from the Ankhi Das postings.
Second-order effects
- Domestic alternatives positioned as culturally aligned with the ruling party, like Koo, stand to inherit users and legitimacy if Washington-aligned platforms keep colliding with New Delhi's rules.
- Facebook's India strategy shifts further toward political accommodation, since the Das episode shows its local influence was already entangled with the ruling party it must now answer to.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, India becomes a template for large democracies adopting sovereignty-first internet governance — using consumer-protection and net-neutrality language to legitimize the kind of state control Pahwa spent his career fighting.
- The global open-internet norm fragments into blocs where access to platforms depends on national politics, with activists like Pahwa caught between opposing both foreign platform dominance and domestic censorship.
The trend: India's tech policy is pivoting from defending an open internet against US platforms toward state-directed digital sovereignty, with the country's own net-neutrality heroes warning the playbook resembles China's.