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Government regulation and censorship of different media and communication technologies is not new—either in India or around the world. One significant example from Indian history is the censorship of the press during the national Emergency declared in 1975 (Krishna Ananth, 2020). Similar examples from recent times include the shutting down of phone and Internet services at the sites of protest against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA)(Gettleman et al., 2019; Krishnani, 2019; Nazim, 2019) and the (ongoing) blackout of Internet services in Kashmir in 2019 (Schultz & Yasir, 2020; Zargar, 2020). Such regulation and censorship of media is an important reminder for why people’s media and community media are vital tools in democracies. As pirate and community media initiatives (eg, Radio Alice in Italy, Radio Hauraki in New Zealand) around the world have demonstrated, the very acts of using, creating and sharing media become significant forms of dissent in such contexts. They can capacitate us to question, shape and reconfigure relations of power.