National shutdown
Another four-hour shutdown of the Internet for everyone in Iraq on 17 July 2023, in the Iraq government's belief that this will reduce cheating during high school exams. As we have repeatedly written about here on Pulse, Internet shutdowns cause great harm to a country’s economy and society and are in our opinion NOT the appropriate mechanism to cope with potential exam cheating.
- Total Duration 4 hours
Iraq
- Population
- 46,042,015
Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Partly Free
Local impact
Another four-hour shutdown of the Internet for everyone in Iraq on 17 July 2023, in the Iraq government's belief that this will reduce cheating during high school exams. As we have repeatedly written about here on Pulse, Internet shutdowns cause great harm to a country’s economy and society and are in our opinion NOT the appropriate mechanism to cope with potential exam cheating.
Other supporting information
Measurements from the Internet Outage Detection and Analysis (IODA) project at Georgia Tech show a shutdown on 17 July following a similar pattern to the previous shutdowns, beginning at 01:00 and ending at 05:00 (UTC).
