$7.69 billion were lost in 2024 because of internet shutdowns, according to the latest data from Top10VPN with Pakistan being affected the most economically because of it. Pakistan lost a total of $1.62 billion due to internet lockdown in 2024, followed by $1.58 billion in Myanmar and $1.12 billion in Sudan. Though the global impact of internet shutdowns was still felt in 2024, it wasn't as severe as in previous years. In 2022, the losses totaled $24.61 billion, followed by $9.01 billion in 2023.
2024 marked the year with the highest number of countries being affected because of internet lockdown (28). 167 of the internet lockdowns were self imposed in those countries and it affected 648.4 million people.
The internet outages reported were 88,788 hours in total, which is a 12% increase from 2023. Even though there were some major internet shutdowns in 2024, there was a decline of social media blockages. X got shut down in Pakistan and that's why many people thought that there was an increase in social media outages but that wasn't the case.
When internet shutdowns happen, even VPNs cannot be of any help to bypass the restrictions imposed on citizens. Internet shutdowns are a result of the government imposing outages for a lot of reasons for example an incident that causes mass political unrest or to not let people talk about a certain issue.
Sometimes, governments shutdown internet in a specific area and sometimes, they shut down the whole country too. In the past year many areas of India got internet shutdowns where the government tried to shut down specific networks or even the whole infrastructure of the internet. This has many severe economic effects on the people who rely completely on the internet for their work.
Most of the internet outages reported in 2024 were because of civil conflicts. Iraq had the highest number of internet outages in 2024. But on the other hand, Pakistan had the biggest economic effect because of internet outages happening in the country due to anti-government protests and elections-rigging. Conflict was the main reason for internet outages in Sudan and Myanmar.
If there are any social media blocks by the government in the country, citizens can use VPNs to access that platform. As there have been a lot of internet shutdowns in 2024, VPN use has also increased. X and TikTok have been the most blocked apps in 2024 in some countries, so many people access them using VPN.
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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World
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