A government order has blocked 26 Reddit posts in India, most of them about the India–China border, without naming the law used or the agency that sent it. The order lists its sender as “[Redacted],” its subject as “Unknown” and leaves its law field blank, according to the notice Reddit filed with the Lumen Database, which collects takedown requests.
“Reddit received a takedown order from India concerning 26 URLs,” the notice says. Reddit marked “Action taken” as “Yes,” and the posts can no longer be seen in India.
The X account @geoblockedindia, which tracks content blocked in India, listed the posts on October 24 and posted the order. The Lumen notice is the only public record of the order, according to the Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF).
The original order concerning 25 Reddit posts restricted in India is attached for public reference.
— Geo Blocked in India 𝕎 (@geoblockedindia) October 24, 2026
The quoted thread contains links to all 25 posts, along with their details, for further examination. https://t.co/Hqxa4OIl7e pic.twitter.com/ZylHgZ4ttH
What does the order say?
The Lumen notice gives these details:
- Sent on: October 21, 2026.
- Sender: “[Redacted],” marked “Private.”
- Type of request: “Agency,” under the notice type “Government Request.”
- Subject: “Unknown.”
- Laws or regulations: Blank.
- Recipient: Reddit, Inc, in San Francisco, which also filed the notice.
What posts were blocked?
The 26 posts sit across 18 subreddits, including six in r/Northeastindia and two each in r/IndianDefense, r/GeopoliticsIndia and r/indiadiscussion. Others are in r/China, r/AskAChinese, r/myanmar and r/MapPorn. They include:
- Galwan clash: Threads on footage and photos from the June 2020 clash in Galwan Valley, including posts verifying footage that China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) released, and a post on Indian and Chinese troops coming face to face.
- Arunachal Pradesh: A post on China renewing its claim over the state after India said an Arunachal Pradesh woman was detained while transiting through Shanghai, carrying statements from China’s foreign ministry, India’s objection and a TRT World report. Another asks Chinese users what they think of Arunachal Pradesh.
- Maps: A map with part of Jammu and Kashmir missing, posts objecting to wrong maps of India, and users’ sketches of proposed new states in the Northeast.
- Other posts: A thread on satellite images of Chinese structures, and a video of a Nepali woman asking Pakistan to “gift” the Northeast to Nepal.
Several of the posts are five or six years old, and three had already been deleted by their authors, IFF said. The satellite images had been reported by Indian news outlets, it added.
Reddit blocks by URL, so each block also hides every reply under the post. Readers outside India, and anyone in India using a virtual private network (VPN), can still see the posts. Subreddit moderators receive no notice and have no way to appeal, IFF said.
Why it matters
The order affects Indian internet users in four ways:
- Users can’t challenge it: To contest a blocking order in court, a user needs to know which law was used and who issued the order. This one names neither, so the people who wrote these posts have no clear way to challenge it.
- Users may never know: Reddit blocks by URL, so every reply under a post is hidden too. The commenters and the moderators of the 18 subreddits receive no notice, IFF said. On October 5, the Punjab and Haryana High Court ruled that users must get a copy of any blocking notice sent to a platform about their content. Nobody affected by this order has received one.
- Indians lose access to information others can see: The posts include footage China’s army released, satellite images Indian outlets reported, and discussion of China’s claims over Arunachal Pradesh. Readers in China and everywhere else can still see them. Readers in India cannot, unless they use a VPN.
- Most orders stay hidden: The public knows about this order only because Reddit chose to file it with Lumen and @geoblockedindia found it. Platforms are not required to publish government orders, and Section 69A orders are confidential under the 2009 blocking rules. The officials behind most takedowns in India face no public scrutiny.
Which law could the government have used?
The government can block online content in two ways, and the takedown notice does not say which it used.
Section 69A of the Information Technology (IT) Act lets the government block content on these conditions:
- Grounds: Content can be blocked “in the interest of sovereignty and integrity of India, defence of India, security of the State, friendly relations with foreign States or public order.”
- Reasons: The government must record its reasons “in writing.”
- Review: Under the 2009 blocking rules, a committee of officials examines each request, and a review committee check orders every two months. The review committee had not revoked a single order since 2009, according to an RTI reply we reported in 2022.
- Secrecy: The rules require “strict confidentiality” for requests and the action taken on them. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) has cited this to refuse to publish blocking orders.
- Penalty: A platform that refuses to comply can face up to seven years in prison.
Section 79(3)(b) lets any authorised officer send a takedown notice to a platform, through the government’s Sahyog portal. Reddit was not among the 94 platforms onboarded to Sahyog as of September 2025, according to an RTI reply we reported.
The Karnataka High Court dismissed X’s challenge to Sahyog in September 2025, and X has appealed. This month, the government also issued about 200 takedown orders through Sahyog ahead of the protests demanding the resignation of chief election commissioner Gyanesh Kumar, as we reported.
What does IFF say?
“Nothing on this list is of that kind, because every item was already public, whether released by the PLA, reported by Indian newsrooms or posted by ordinary users,” IFF said, referring to speech that endangers India’s defence, such as troop positions and operational plans.
IFF called the order “secret, disproportionate and unlawful.” The Supreme Court upheld Section 69A in Shreya Singhal (2015) because the blocking rules require written reasons, a hearing and a review, and none of these was followed here, IFF said. It wants the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and the agency behind the order to:
- Publish the order: Including the provision used and the reasons for each URL.
- Withdraw it: And give a hearing before blocking any post said to be unlawful.
- Review it: Through the review committee under the blocking rules.
- Disclose Reddit blocks: How many Reddit URLs the government has had blocked since 2024, and on what grounds.
IFF statement on the geo-blocking of 26 Reddit posts in India
— Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF) (@internetfreedom) October 25, 2026
On 21 October 2026, Reddit, Inc filed with the Lumen Database a government takedown order from India covering 26 URLs and complied, so that all 26 posts are now geo-blocked in India (Lumen notice 100411498). The…
How often does India ask Reddit to remove content?
India sent Reddit 21 government takedown requests between July and December 2025, the second-most after the United Arab Emirates (UAE), out of 169 from 28 countries, IFF said, citing Reddit’s transparency report. India sent fewer than ten in all of 2019. Reddit complied with all 26 URLs in this order without a public challenge.
Also read:
- Explained: What is the Sahyog portal that X called out for censorship?
- Karnataka HC dismisses X’s petition against the Sahyog portal
- How India’s content takedown framework was built and where it has gone wrong
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