Past

National shutdown

This is the seventh year that Syria has shut the Internet down during high school exams.  This is recorded for 2 June 2022. State-owned operator announced the scheduled disruption on platforms like Facebook, describing four outages, each scheduled to last for three and a half hours. The Syrian government has unplugged the Internet every year during student exams time since 2016, after exam questions began appearing on social media prior to the exams. Yet there is growing evidence that shutdowns are an ineffective way to prevent cheating, as questions still get leaked in spite of an Internet blackout.

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Flag of Syria Syria

Population
24,672,760

Freedom House rates Internet freedom as Not Free

View full country profile for Syria

Local impact

This is the seventh year that Syria has shut the Internet down during high school exams.  This is recorded for 2 June 2022. State-owned operator announced the scheduled disruption on platforms like Facebook, describing four outages, each scheduled to last for three and a half hours. The Syrian government has unplugged the Internet every year during student exams time since 2016, after exam questions began appearing on social media prior to the exams. Yet there is growing evidence that shutdowns are an ineffective way to prevent cheating, as questions still get leaked in spite of an Internet blackout.

Other supporting information

The disruption as seen from Internet measurement providers

IODA Signals for Syrian Arab Republic

Second round of exams

Cloudflare Radar

Internet traffic change in Syria

Second round of exams

Google Transparency Report

Product traffic in Syria from May to June 2022

Second round of exams

Product traffic in Syria from July to August 2022

Social media

USD $22,047

estimated negative impact on national economy

Netloss Calculator

Shutdown history

  • 11 shutdowns in the last 12 months
  • 73 shutdowns since 2018
  • 1,133 shutdown hours since 2018

View as a list

Community coverage