In 2013, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg released a 10-page white paper outlining his new vision, titled “Is Connectivity a Human Right?”. It contained “a rough proposal for how we can connect the next five billion people”, with help from a consortium of tech companies christened Internet.org. Not only did Zuckerberg’s plan include broadening access to existing telecommunications networks, it even covered developing new technologies like solar-powered drones that would loiter over remote areas, beaming data connections to the people below.

Half the world’s population lives without a reliable internet connection, which limits their access to education, financial services, political engagement, free expression, and more. Among them is Salim Azim Assani, co-founder of WenakLabs, a digital hub in N’Djamena, the capital of Chad. In 2008, government authorities shut down access to social media like Facebook and Twitter, citing the spread of religious extremism. The services remained offline for 16 months.

“We lost money, and some of our customers, because of the internet block,” says Assani. “Some of our customers cancelled their contracts because they think it is not a good moment to use social media. Working with artists or musicians, they can’t have a lot of views because a lot of people don’t know how to use VPNs, or because VPNs are not easy for them to use.”

Fifty years after the first computers were laced into an internet, and 30 years since the World Wide Web was built on top of this “network of networks”, the free and open online world envisioned by early pioneers is under attack. In the last few years, partial cuts and even total blackouts have been reported in India, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Iraq.

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Joshua Franco is deputy director of Amnesty Tech. While the organisation doesn’t comprehensively monitor the world for internet shutdowns, he says the practice is increasing. “In the west and central Africa region we found 12 cases of intentional mobile and internet cuts in 2017, up from 11 in 2016. In 2018, we had 20 in that region,” he says. “Our fear is that would continue to rise.”

Typically, the justification for these cuts is to curb unrest: when Sri Lankan authorities cut access to social media in the wake of the 2019 Easter terror attacks, they said this was necessary to prevent the spread of misinformation and panic. “We look more at impact, because the motives are not always totally knowable,” says Franco. But he adds: “The coincidence around crucial public events, such as elections and protests, raise our suspicions that it’s a way of quelling free speech.”