residents of the state of Rajasthan in north-west India discovered that their mobile phones could no longer connect to the internet. For several hours services such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Google Maps were rendered useless. The outage was no accident. District officials explained they had ordered internet providers to shut off access to pre-empt cheating on an exam for highly coveted teacher positions in the state’s school system. But the shutdown affected millions more.
Shutdowns have become more sophisticated in recent years. Authorities have learned to take out specific platforms, such as WhatsApp or Twitter, to discourage political mobilisation. They may also ask internet services providers to throttle, or deliberately slow down, network traffic or hit only mobile internet connections. Shutdowns may affect individual cities or entire countries; they may last a few hours or drag on for months.
The motivations for such interruptions are usually political. India has ordered internet shutdowns to quell local protests and to stamp out civil unrest, especially in the Kashmir valley. This year Uganda, Niger and the Democratic Republic of Congo imposed blackouts in the run-up to closely fought elections.
They are costly, too. A study by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think-tank, found that internet shutdowns cost countries $2.4bn in lostin 2016. Some consider them human-rights violations. , and condemning “measures to intentionally prevent or disrupt access to our dissemination of information online”. The resolution was passed without a vote but a number of countries supported amendments to weaken it. Among them were China, Russia and India.
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