Golden Quisling of the Week: Swarajya

India “streamlined” its takedown machinery last week—fewer signatures to censor more, the same 36-hour clock, and a nicer label on the choke valve. Most outlets described it as what it is: a cleaner pipeline for state pressure. Swarajya, however, sprinted past compliance into choreography, praising the upgrade as “transparency,” “clarity,” and “proportionality.” That’s not reporting; that’s a press release with adjectives.

Here’s the tell: platforms weren’t asking for moral cover; they were asking for process boundaries. Instead, Swarajyahanded the government a halo and called it a handbook—framing faster silences as civic hygiene. When media celebrates the mechanism of erasure as a win for accountability, they’re not just carrying water; they’re bottling it for resale.

So yes—Golden Quisling to Swarajya for voluntarily laundering censorship infrastructure into “best practices.” This is what preemptive obedience looks like in the age of platform governance: smile for the camera while the microphone cord gets shorter.