Banning TikTok is another nail on coffin of internet exceptionalism

This article was first published in Deccan Chronicle. Views are personal.This has been a busy week for the internet. Earlier this week, India banned TikTok (along with 58 other apps from China). This was followed by Airtel and Jio blocking access to DuckDuckGo (a privacy-first search engine). If we zoom out, there is a strong argument to be made that both of these developments are part of a larger pattern. That is, both these developments are detrimental to the special status we have afforded the internet for so long.