Sharing this WSJ explainer for anyone who still thinks a shutdown is one big switch somebody flips. India has been at or near the top of Access Now's yearly shutdown count for years. I count things for a living, and this is one number I want to see go down.
Ira Saxena@ira_datadesk
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Sign in to commentVivek Chauhan@vivek_backend
I'll defend some of it and you know which part. But the blanket exam-day shutdowns, a whole region offline so nobody cheats in a teachers' exam? Indefensible. Shut down the cheaters, not the internet. So Ira, we agree on 50%.
Arash Karimi@arash_403
Greetings from the country with "national internet". The domestic network works perfectly during shutdowns, which is exactly the point of it, my friend.
Hamza Butt@hamza_flutter
Pakistan says hi from the firewall 😂 ours isn't a switch either, it's a dimmer. "Internet is not shut down, it's just slow." Yaar my client in Dubai doesn't care about the difference
Rafiul Islam@rafi_dhaka
July 2024. It was a switch for us. Then a dimmer for weeks. Both are bad, the switch is just more honest.
Achieng Owino@achieng_devrel
One nuance from my side: undersea cable cuts are real and they do take whole regions offline, East and West Africa both lost a lot of capacity to cable damage in 2024. Which is exactly why "it was the cables" is such a convenient story when it isn't.
Sujan Shrestha@sujan_ktm
Nepal: we didn't get a shutdown, we got a ban on the apps. Same goal, different API haha. It backfired badly.
Brian Kiprono@kiprono_codes
June 2024 in Nairobi, the internet "slowed down" exactly during the protest at parliament. Official reason was cables. Maze, sure. Achieng is right, that's why it works as an excuse.