A look at life under governments that use internet blackouts, as a watchdog documented 196+ shutdowns across 25 countries in 2018, up from 75 shutdowns in 2016
Patrick Kingsley / New York Times : Tweets: @nytimes , @freedomonthenet , @emilyschmall , @razarumi , @lyssaslounge , @digiphile , and @kenroth Tweets: @nytimes : Internet shutdowns have become one of the defining tools of government repression in the 21st century. In 2018, there were at least 196 shutdowns in 25 countries. There have been 114 so far this year. https://www.nytimes.com/... @freedomonthenet : .@PatrickKingsley on internet shutdowns: “more than a quarter of the world's nations have used the tactic at one point or another over the past four years.” https://www.nytimes.com/... #KeepItOn @emilyschmall : India leads the world in internet shutdowns, with most occurring in disputed #Kashmir where for decades a separatist movement has enjoyed popular support. https://www.apnews.com/... https://twitter.com/... Raza Ahmad Rumi / @razarumi : “Internet shutdowns have become one of the defining tools of government repression in the 21st century...seeking to quash dissent.. shutdowns..batter whole economies& individual businesses,as well as drastically disrupt the daily life of ordinary citizens” https://www.nytimes.com/... Katharina Borchert / @lyssaslounge : Not enough people know about this but it's become a dangerous habit for too many governments. #internetshutdown https://twitter.com/... Alex Howard / @digiphile : Around the world, Internet shutdowns are the hallmark of illiberal governments, which typically justify the resulting societal censorship & economic harms with questionable claims about misinformation or criminal activity. https://www.nytimes.com/... https://twitter.com/... Kenneth Roth / @kenroth : Internet shutdowns have become one of the defining tools of government repression in the 21st. India leads the way (e.g., Kashmir today). Zimbabwe is also a regular practitioner. https://www.nytimes.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The Freedom on the Net figures mark an inflection point in a documented escalation: what was barely tracked when governments shut down the internet just over 50 times in 2016 had nearly tripled by 2018, with more than a quarter of the world's nations using the tactic at least once over four years.
Subsequent reporting confirmed the trajectory rather than reversing it — Access Now later logged 187 shutdowns across 35 countries in 2022 and a record 283 across 39 countries in 2023 — with India the most frequent practitioner throughout, concentrated in Kashmir, making this 2019 piece the early map of what became a defining tool of government repression.
First-order effects
- Populations and businesses in the 25 affected countries face immediate disruption to daily commerce and communication, since shutdowns batter whole economies and individual businesses, not just political dissent.
- Watchdogs like Freedom on the Net gain a concrete benchmark — 196 shutdowns in 2018 versus 75 in 2016 — that turns anecdotal censorship into a measurable, comparable annual statistic.
Second-order effects
- India's status as the world's most frequent shutdower pressures its own economy hardest: Kashmir's repeated blackouts show the cost falls on the governed region's businesses and daily life, giving critics a quantifiable case against the practice.
- As the count rises each monitored year, other governments observing that shutdowns draw limited consequence have an incentive to add the tactic to their own crisis playbook, normalizing what began as an outlier measure.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, internet access joins press freedom and election oversight as a standard axis of democratic assessment — with independent monitors like Access Now institutionalizing annual counts that regulators, courts, and foreign ministries can cite.
- The steady climb from dozens of shutdowns toward hundreds per year suggests connectivity itself is being reclassified by some states from infrastructure to a revocable privilege, a structural shift that outlasts any single government.
The trend: Internet shutdowns are scaling from occasional crisis measures into routine instruments of state control, with monitor-documented counts rising every year since tracking began in 2016.