Pulse Blog

This article was first published on the Internet Society blog. The Indian government’s recent Internet shutdown during farmer protests impacted over 50 million residents. It is a stark warning of the danger of tampering with the foundations that make the Internet work for everyone. Internet shutdowns are a dangerous tactic increasingly used by the state to quell situations […]

This article was first published in Coindesk on 4 February 2021 by Sandali Handagama. (c) Sandali Handagama / Coindesk. Internet disruptions are costly, but that doesn’t stop governments from shutting down access. The new military government in Myanmar has reportedly ordered telecommunications companies to temporarily block access to Facebook citing the platform is a threat to the […]

On 13 January, ahead of the Ugandan 2021 General Elections, our data sources began showing evidence of Internet disruption in Uganda signaling that a wide scale outage was underway. Over 17.5 million Internet subscribers in the country and countless business, services and educational institutions were affected.     Prior to the shutdown, Reuters,  NYTimes, and AccessNow had […]

One of the indicators we provide as part of our Insights platform is the economic cost of shutdowns. In our data, we rely on a tool developed with Netblocks.org, the Cost of Shutdown Tool (COST). The COST builds upon indicators from the World Bank, ITU, Eurostat and U.S. Census to estimate the economic impact of […]

The Kashmir Observer has documented the impact of long-lived Internet shutdowns on the young people in Kashmir. As is clear from our map of the frequency of shutdown events, India is a repeat offender where Internet shutdowns are concerned. The political unrest in the Kashmir region has been used to justify the long-lived shutdown of […]

This article was first published on the Internet Society blog. Although the COVID-19 pandemic is, unfortunately, far from over, the Internet continues to be resilient, supporting the additional demands that we have placed on it, including the rapid growth in online learning, work videoconferences, e-commerce, streaming video entertainment, and more. Because the Internet exists as a […]

It’s being called the world’s biggest work-from-home experiment. With concerns growing over the spread of the COVID-19 Coronavirus, schools and businesses around the world are implementing contingency plans that encourage distance learning and work from home. Usage of e-learning, messaging, and videoconferencing tools is also growing rapidly, placing additional load on these Internet-based applications and platforms and generating […]

In March 2019, in a move described in one news report as a “government-imposed Internet shutdown,” the president of Sri Lanka temporarily blocked Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Viber, and other services. In this case, limited access to a class of applications was inaccurately painted as a full-scale Internet shutdown. Unfortunately, this isn’t unusual. Media coverage and general discussion […]

Global Internet freedom declined for the ninth consecutive year in 2019, largely as a result of social media increasingly being used by governments around the world as a conduit for mass surveillance and electoral manipulation