- The duration of government-imposed internet outages worldwide increased by 49% in 2020 compared to the previous year, according to a report by Top10VPN.
- Although the economic impact of these stoppages was much less than in 2019, the cost of human rights appears to be increasing.
- This is because Internet blackouts have disproportionately affected people in the poorest countries.
- One of the report’s authors told Business Insider that the outages prevented people from accessing health information “and therefore may have contributed to the continued spread of the virus”.
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Government-imposed internet blackouts increased by 49% in 2020 compared to 2019, according to research by the digital security and rights group Top10VPN.
According to the Top10VPN report, 93 major internet outages occurred in 21 countries around the world in 2020, including internet limitation – meaning the only internet available was 2G – as well as social media outages and complete internet blackouts. .
In total, 2020 saw 27,165 hours of Internet outages, a dramatic increase of 49% compared to 2019. Top10VPN estimated that these blackouts affected 268 million people worldwide, an increase of 3% over the previous year.
One of the report’s authors told Business Insider that the outages prevented people from accessing health information “and therefore may have contributed to the continued spread of the virus”.
While the financial impact of shutting down the internet was only half of what it cost the world economy in 2019, the cost of human rights was significantly higher, the report said.
The report’s authors noted that the longest outages were concentrated in the poorest countries, resulting in less global economic impact.
“Although the overall impact on the global economy has diminished, authoritarian regimes have shown little restraint in the face of a global pandemic and the poorest countries have been disproportionately affected,” they wrote.
India accounted for $ 2.8 billion of the total economic impact, with 75 internet outages throughout 2020, totaling about 8,900 hours – although Top10VPN noted that the actual number was probably higher.
“Most of these short blackouts were highly targeted, affecting groups of villages or individual city districts and therefore were not included in this report, which focuses on major outages across the region. The real economic cost is, therefore, probably still higher than the $ 2.8 billion we calculated, “said the report.
“The prolonged strike in Kashmir was particularly damaging. It disrupted the distribution of medical services, negatively impacted student education and hurt local businesses,” said Samuel Woodhams, one of the authors of the report to Business Insider.
India cut off Internet access in the Kashmir region on August 4, 2019 – the day before the country’s government revoked the region’s self-employed status. This blackout was partially suspended in March 2020, but the speed of the Internet remained limited.
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Woodhams added that, in the context of the pandemic, Internet outages represent an even more worrying violation of human rights than usual. “During the pandemic, shutting down the Internet restricted citizens’ ability to access vital health information and therefore may have contributed to the continued spread of the virus,” he said.
Myanmar restricted access to the Internet for a period of time similar to that of India, and in June reports emerged from the country that some citizens had not even heard of the coronavirus pandemic due to lack of access to the Internet.