As tensions between India and Pakistan escalated following a terrorist attack in India-administered Kashmir on April 22, 2025, misinformation ran rife on broadcast and online spaces on both sides of the border. Social media was flooded with unverified claims of drone attacks, explosions, captures, mock drills, and more. A combination of television broadcasters rampantly misreporting events with impunity and social media platforms brimming with new, unverified updates by the second created an unprecedented information environment of dread, anxiety, and paralyzing fear for close to two weeks.
In desperate attempts to streamline this feral flow of information, both governments invoked sweeping legislative powers to censor, block, and stifle online speech – except the attempts were demonstratively partisan, excessive, and chilling, even for actors who had no active role in this misinformation war. This episode is the most recent of many examples of how a technology once hailed for democratizing knowledge has increasingly become a leash in the hands of states. Online spaces are now fertile grounds for unbridled control, giving rise to the concept of “digital authoritarianism.” This problem is not unique to India and Pakistan by any means, but both governments – long flagged by human rights groups as digital authoritarian regimes – flexed that muscle in full public view during the April-May escalations.
In India, the result was mass censorship at an unprecedented scale. Over 8,000 accounts belonging to media houses, journalists, and individual users – homed largely in Pakistan but also in India, China, Turkiye, and Bangladesh – were withheld on X, Pakistani creators and news channels on YouTube and Spotify were geoblocked, and websites of independent Indian news publications suspended without reason. After X reported having received requests from the Indian government to suspend the 8,000+ accounts, the official X account itself was briefly withheld and then restored in mere hours – marking a unique and bizarre instance of platforms geoblocking themselves.
In retaliation, Pakistan banned 16 Indian YouTube channels, 31 video links, and 32 websites. Arrests followed on both sides: in India, up to 100 users were detained, while Pakistan’s National Cyber Crimes Investigation Agency reportedly flagged at least 500 domestic accounts for potential arrest over alleged anti-state content – a number that has continued to rise.
Platforms occupy a precarious sociolegal position in both countries. India, with one of the largest user bases for many mainstream platforms, mandates several of these companies to have local offices or “compliance officers,” making them directly subject to government orders. These officers can be held criminally liable if the platform does not comply with official orders, including takedown requests. For instance, when X announced the geoblocking of over 8,000 accounts, it cited its limited legal standing in India as a key reason for its inability to effectively resist such demands. Beyond platform compliance, India has earned a reputation as the global leader in internet shutdowns. Authorities frequently restrict access to information by shutting down internet services or throttling data speeds citing vague security concerns – including, bemusingly, measures to keep students from cheating in local exams.
Pakistan too has brought platforms to their knees by imposing bans that it stubbornly upholds for months or even years – sometimes outmaneuvering higher courts by refusing to acknowledge these bans or pretending not to know who authorized them. TikTok, for instance, has faced repeated complaints, threats of bans, and actual suspensions over alleged obscenity, forcing the platform to exercise heightened caution in Pakistan by rigorously censoring and moderating content. Interestingly, during the recent escalations, Pakistan lifted its 15-month ban on X – a move analysts attributed to the need for a counternarrative to India’s dominant media blitz.
As the smoke clears and civilian populations start to sort the fact from fake, it is becoming clearer that during this time, both governments exploited this crisis to expand their authority far beyond legitimate bounds. Invoking vaguely defined “national security” provisions, they imposed sweeping controls on online speech – not to protect citizens, but to monopolize truth itself. What was justified as a necessary defense against misinformation revealed itself to be something far more sinister: an authoritarian playbook in action.
By declaring a crisis, governments trigger what is called the “securitization” process – elevating issues beyond democratic debate into the realm of supposed existential threats. This tactic thrives in the digital realm, where laws lag behind technology. Once a threat is declared, censorship becomes “necessary,” and dissent becomes “dangerous.” The 2025 crackdowns offered a textbook case: seize on a distressing event, amplify its stakes into an all-consuming crisis, and then position the state as the sole solution by silencing all competing narratives. The result is a perverse inversion of democratic governance – where the state does not respond to public will, but dictates it. This is not merely information control; it is thought control, and it is killing democracy from within. During the escalations, rampant censorship and lack of checks on dangerous media narratives were tools both nations wielded to let favorable narratives run amok. This served to encourage nationalist sentiment and war mongering on a massive scale.
Under the guise of curbing “false information” from adversarial sources, India and Pakistan manipulated public perception to manufacture consent for hostility. With citizens exposed only to state-approved versions of events, critical questions about the necessity and proportionality of military action, its human cost, and the risks of further escalation were drowned out by nationalist fervor. Citizens mindlessly echoed state-sanctioned rhetoric, not because they were persuaded by evidence, but because alternative perspectives had been systemically erased. Through this information stranglehold, both governments ensured that hostility appeared not just justified, but inevitable.
Democratic governance fundamentally depends on citizens’ ability to think critically and independently. This requires open dialogue, access to diverse perspectives, and the freedom to question official narratives. Yet when states selectively filter information, they sabotage this process in two ways: first by starving cognitive reasoning of diverse facts, and second by manipulating emotions through single-narrative echo chambers. This engineered reality operates in phases. It begins by flooding the information space with a curated blend of facts, half-truths, and propaganda, all advancing a singular agenda. Then, the exits are sealed by blocking dissenting voices to eliminate any path to alternative viewpoints. The result is a closed epistemic system where the state’s voice overwhelms all others, creating populations that lose not just the capacity for objective analysis, but the very awareness that alternatives might exist. Their emotions, too, are hijacked – fed only one-sided narratives that demand loyalty, not reflection. In this environment, every piece of information propels them in a single, state-approved direction, making critical reflection not just difficult but structurally impossible.
Emergency powers, due to their extraordinary scope, are particularly susceptible to misuse – which is precisely why they must withstand rigorous ethical and legal evaluation once the crisis abates. While military escalations between two nuclear-armed states undoubtedly constitute serious regional security threats, even in such emergencies, extraordinary state actions must meet strict thresholds of necessity and proportionality and be subject to post-facto justification. Governments must be able to demonstrate, with evidence, how such measures enforced security or prevented harm to their citizenry.
In the case of both India and Pakistan, this justification has been lacking. Neither state has adequately explained how unrestricted access to information would have endangered peace and security. Nor have they demonstrated how censorship contributed to de-escalation. Emergency powers, once invoked, rarely recede. When governments unilaterally define truth, they do not defend democracy; they replace it with a system where reality is whatever the state declares. The real conflict, then, is not just over censorship, but over who owns the truth.