Access Now: 54 countries imposed internet shutdowns at least 296 times in 2024, led by Myanmar, displacing India from the top spot for the first time since 2018
Context & Ripple Effects
Access Now's count has risen from 187 shutdowns across 35 countries in 2022 to 283 across 39 countries in 2023, and now at least 296 across 54 countries in 2024. The change in the country leading the tally matters because India had been the recurring focal point in the prior coverage.
Myanmar replacing India at the top does not reverse the broader pattern: shutdown use is appearing across a wider set of countries even as the annual total continues to grow.
First-order effects
- Myanmar becomes the primary country associated with the highest reported volume of shutdowns in 2024, while India loses a position it had held since 2018.
- The report records a wider geographic footprint than the prior year's 283 shutdowns in 39 countries, giving Access Now and readers a broader country-level baseline for tracking restrictions.
Second-order effects
- Country rankings become less India-centric: scrutiny of shutdown policy and its effects will increasingly need to account for Myanmar and the larger group of governments represented in the tally.
- A rise in both incidents and participating countries makes year-over-year comparisons more important, since changes in the leader alone can obscure the spread of the practice.
Third-order effects
- If the multi-year increase persists, internet shutdowns will look less like a concentrated practice of a few repeat offenders and more like a distributed tool of state control.
- The pattern raises the value of consistent independent measurement: comparable annual data is needed to distinguish a shift in country leadership from a durable expansion in use.
The trend: Internet shutdowns are becoming a more geographically distributed form of state control, with leadership shifting even as the monitored total rises.