Recently, the Government of India temporarily blocked Telegram after the messaging app was used to leak questions and organise cheating in a public examination taken by millions of students. Telegram challenged the move in the Delhi High Court. It argued that the law only allowed blocking specific illegal content and did not permit blocking the entire platform used by millions of users. The High Court disagreed, in a ruling that changes how technology companies operating in India should think about the architecture of their apps. This change brings to focus the obligation on platforms to prevent recurring harm. The Court confirmed the government’s long-held position that it had legal authority to block an entire app, not merely specific content published on it. Such a block can be ordered overnight, with the company allowed to argue its case to the government only afterwards. What matters is not the power itself but what it makes possible: A design flaw that once might have been a customer-service headache can now be the reason an app disappears from a …