After a series of bombings killed over 300 people in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday, the country’s government blocked access to social media sites including Facebook, instagram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, and YouTube, along with the chat app Viber, according to state media and independent organizations that monitor internet blocks. A number of tech commentators, from The New York Times to The Guardian, quickly expressed support for Sri Lanka’s decision, citing it as evidence that Facebook has failed to stop the spread of misinformation and hate speech in the country and elsewhere.

Yet civil rights experts and researchers within Sri Lanka worry that the practice of shutting down entire swaths of the internet—which has become increasingly common around the world—can do more harm than good. “Curbing civil liberties and civil rights doesn’t make people more safe,” says Allie Funk, a research analyst at the nonprofit Freedom House, which publishes annual country reports on internet freedom. “These are societal issues that are going to take long-term solutions.”

There’s little doubt that misinformation circulating on sites like Facebook and on messaging platforms like WhatsApp has helped stoke violence in countries like Sri Lanka, but in the aftermath of the attacks, local reporters and researchers warned international journalists not to hastily draw conclusions about Facebook’s role in the violence. Sri Lanka is a country, after all, with a complex and recent history of civil war that predates the introduction of Mark Zuckerberg’s invention. Internet penetration remains low, and experts have noted that much of the hateful rhetoric continues to circulate the old-fashioned way: through word of mouth.

Nevertheless, having access to sites like Facebook can be critical in the aftermath of an emergency. “Many in Sri Lanka rely on social media platforms and messaging apps to reach out to their families,” Berhan Taye, a campaigner at the digital rights nonprofit Access Now, wrote in a blog post. “For those in danger, and for those who want to help, not being able to connect or confirm that a loved one is safe can be devastating.”

Taye also noted that during a January terrorist attack in Kenya, victims similarly used platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp to communicate vital information.

“With the lack of official information sources and clear-cut channels of communication, social media was the only way for people to properly keep in touch and spread news.” Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, LIRNEasia

Yudhanjaya Wijeratne, a Sri Lankan researcher at the technology think tank LIRNEasia, said that Facebook’s Safety Check feature helped people quickly discover whether their friends and family were OK after Sunday’s bombings. He notes that fake news did also begin to spread, but not solely due to Facebook’s shortcomings. Official information disseminated by the government was haphazard, and traditional media outlets in Sri Lanka, like newspapers, are not always accurate due to government censorship. (Reporters Without Borders has consistently ranked Sri Lanka in the bottom half of its annual World Press Freedom Index.)

“With the lack of official information sources and clear-cut channels of communication, social media kind of was the only way for people to properly keep in touch and spread news,” Wijeratne says. “And then it became a double-edged sword afterward.”

What's more, restricting access to social media can make it harder for Sri Lankans to see valuable independent news stories shared online. “Digital media remains a greater space of freedom than more traditional media in the country,” says Funk, who edited Freedom House’s report on internet freedom in Sri Lanka. In 2018, the organization rated the country's internet as only “partly free” as a result of government censorship and limited access.

With the Sri Lankan government, experts warn, there’s danger in Facebook becoming a scapegoat for longstanding tensions between ethnic and religious groups. Just 10 years ago, the country ended a decades-long civil war between the majority Sinhalese and minority Tamil populations. “Successive governments in Sri Lanka have flagged Facebook and social media as the sole or primary progenitors of violence, ignoring the fact that government itself has done little to uphold the rule of law or address the root causes,” Sri Lankan researcher Sanjana Hattotuwa wrote in a policy brief for the nonpartisan Toda Peace Institute last year, after the government blocked access to social media following anti-Muslim riots.