When the internet goes dark: How states are weaponising digital shutdowns to stifle dissent

“I started noticing a pattern; it was not shut randomly,” Irfan continues. The internet was down from 7.30am to 11am and then from 2.30pm to 10.30pm. He believes it is a “proper curtailment plan”. During earlier internet shutdowns there was usually a reason given by the authorities, he says, but this current pattern has left even journalists like him “clueless”. “What I came to know is that the same pattern is followed in many other areas across Kashmir,” he says.

As of October this year, there have been 317 internet shutdowns in Kashmir since 2012, part of 548 across India in the same period, contributing to a collapse in media freedoms. Governments are increasingly turning to internet shutdowns to control the spread of information often connected to political instability. The estimated cost to the global economy was $8bn in 2019.

Shutdowns are also becoming more sophisticated and targeted. “No longer does a regime have to plunge a whole nation into darkness – it can lock onto a certain group of people it determines as a threat and disconnect them from each other and the rest of the world,” says Felicia Anthonio, a campaigner at Access Now, a digital rights NGO.

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