Governments Can Suddenly Shut Down Your Internet - Here's Why

I live in Kenya and around late June, we had large nationwide protests against a budget draft (Finance Bill) that proposed an increase in taxes that would’ve been eventually gobbled up by our corrupt politicians. So on June 25th, our parliament passed the Finance Bill after being told by citizens to reject it. Protestors got mad and invaded the Parliament building and soon after, the government teamed up with our largest network/internet provider to strangle the internet for a few hours. Right after the internet blackout, the Police went on a killing spree. After a few hours when tensions cooled down, the internet came back and our largest network provider (Safaricom) wrote a statement saying an “underwater sea cable” got damaged causing the internet blackout when in fact there was no evidence of the sea cable failure.

What governments call "censoring misinformation" most people call "silencing the truth".

If any government considers shutting down the internet a casual thing, remember in Bangladesh, a 15-year-old and quite powerful government was thrown out of power, shutting down the internet was one of the major causes.

No Government should have the ability to shut down the Internet

I live in Syria and trust me brother it's WAY worse than you mentioned. every high school exam for the last 5 years comes with a 3-4 hours complete telecommunication shut down. yes not only the internet but also mobile calls/sms as well, leaving only landlines working. as you can imagine there are countless disasters coming out of this unfathomably stupid decision, last month an old woman in my neighbourhood had a stroke at the time of the shut down, she lived alone with only a mobile phone and she was found barely alive by her family trying to call for help and survived with brain damage. car accidents in shut down times are 100 times more dangerous, you can't call a hospital or a friend and you just have to pray you see someone with a working vehicle who can take you to a hospital. this is to say nothing about all the people who work online in a country with complete economic collapse who will suffer because of this. and the worst part is that high school exams will still have cheating anyway as exam observers will actively help students or turn a blind eye on students cheating for financial or even sectarian reasons so it's all basically for nothing. i think people in positions of power know this. they don't care about cheating and to them this is just how an authoritarian government reminds the people who's really in charge.

Nothing should entirely rely on a single thing. That's the kind of lesson you learn the hard way but never forget.

I was an exchange student in Turkey in 2016, and I can confirm that after every terrorist attack, access to major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter was blocked. I was there for about six months, and this pattern occurred repeatedly.

My dude my government, here in Iran, has not only limited access to the internet to a ridiculous degree (apps such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, telegram, WhatsApp, YouTube are inaccessible without VPN), but also have cut access to the internet completely multiple times in recent years. You don't need an episode of black mirror to imagine this. It's already happening.

I live in Bangladesh , and its way more dangerous than you describe. Thousands of business, people's career, company's offshore client destroyed just like that. Part of reason why people come in street and take down the government.

As a student from Bangladesh, my team and I were sending documents and evidence to humanitarian organizations, human rights activists, and embassies during the protests to inform the world about what was happening. The internet shutdown really affected our efforts. Thank you for bringing up this important topic.