Wondering how some countries deal with problems such as a brewing pandemic? For some, the answer is do everything they can to keep the internet from letting the information out. In fact, it doesn't even take a pandemic: Last year, 33 countries across the globe had a hand in shutting down internet access 213 times for their citizens in some fashion. That's up from 25 countries in 2018. It cost a lot of money (an estimated $8 billion lost to the global economy, as it was pre-COVID-19). Naturally, the shutdowns didn't solve any problems ... except for those in power.
The info comes from a report via non-profit human rights group Access Now called #KeepItOn, which attempts to quantify the amount of digital darkness generated by such incidents. They pulled info from news reports, personal stories, and technical measurements from internet freedom watchdog NetBlocks to be as comprehensive as possible but acknowledge that the issues were probably worse than they can convey. VPN vendor Surfshark provided the info to PCMag.
How are countries stymying a network meant to survive major outages? The report says they "are deliberately filtering keywords, throttling the internet, blocking apps, or even cutting access to the web." The report does a deep dive into the filtering techniques used in the report. It can do that because for many countries, it's legal for the government to order ISPs to curb services or block sites. In 2019, 63.64 percent of the shutdowns impacted both mobile and wired-broadband networks; 31.58 percent were mobile only. Of course, blocking social media and chat services such as WhatsApp and Telegram are also popular with Big Brother.
The number-one offender is India, with 121 internet disruptions in 2019 alone. That's 10 times worse than the next-worse country, which happens to be Venezuela. India's blackouts weren't nationwide but used regionally.
The reasons for blocking internet access differ only slightly. In Venezuela, it's about political discussion—or the hoped-for lack thereof. In India and Iran, the internet is shuttered to stop people from protesting or even voting. If countries can't stop these things, they'll at least throttle them. There are 14 intentional cases of that in 2019, 10 of which had complete blackouts after.
Not all governments will admit they do these things—but most do. Only 10 governments outright ignored requests to confirm they did so in 2019.
That's because they feel they can justify the shutdown or throttling as being for the "public good." The top excuse used: to fight fake news or hate speech. Which doesn't match up with the actual cause seen by most observers, which is usually to block protests.
Thankfully, Access Now has noticed that even in countries such as Russia and India, court cases are underway to legally challenge internet stoppages. Not a lot—only five in 2018, but another five were added in the first half of 2019 alone. The Indian Supreme Court ruled in January of 2020 that the extensive shutdown in Kashmir was unconstitutional. So bit by bit, maybe things can improve. Not that the ruling did much to change things in Kashmir. You can read about that in the whole special section on India shutdowns in the #KeepItOn report.
Considering the role COVID-19 has played in 2020, it'll be interesting to read next year's report and see exactly which countries (besides China) tried to "contain the virus" (a.k.a. the bad news) via internet blackouts.