The cost of Internet shutdowns has increased by 324.82 percent from $5.6 billion in 2021 to $23.79 billion in 2022, according to the ‘Global Cost of Internet Shutdown’ report.
The report noted that in 2022 there were 114 large deliberate internet outages in 23 countries. It noted that hours of government internet outages rose 45 percent to 50,095 hours in 2022.
A breakdown of the outages said the internet outage lasted 23,097 hours. Internet downtime was 134 hours, while social media blocks took an additional 26,865 hours.
In 2022, 710 million people were affected by intentional Internet outages, an increase of 41 percent year-on-year.
Twitter emerged as a blocked social media platform. The report said that Russia was the worst affected nation.
The report read in part: “Twitter: the most blocked social media platform, suffers 21,650 hours of intentional blackout – 56 percent more than Instagram and 64 percent more than Facebook. Russia: the most affected nation ($21.59 billion), Iran ($773 million) and Kazakhstan ($410.7 million).
“Human rights impact: 51 percent of government internet disruptions were linked to additional human rights violations, down 30% from 2021: 51% of all internet disruptions were also linked to restrictions on freedom of assembly. Three percent to election interference and 11% to press freedom violations.
“There have been 380 major internet shutdowns in 53 countries since 2019. $41.48 billion: Total cost to the global economy of government internet shutdowns since 2019. 2021: 51 internet shutdowns in 22 countries lasting 34,595 hours cost $5.62 billion. Myanmar government junta most damaging internet shutdowns established ($2.8 billion)
“2020: 93 internet blackouts in 21 countries lasting 27,165 hours cost $4.01 billion. India had the costliest internet outages ($2.8 billion).
“2019: 134 internet blackouts in 22 countries lasting 19,207 hours cost $8.07 billion. Internet outages in Iraq were the most expensive ($2.3 billion).
The report, which estimates the total economic impact of all major internet outages and social media shutdowns around the world, said these outages violate citizens’ digital rights and also cause economic self-harm.
Explaining how it calculates the costs of internet outages, it said: “We monitor all government-imposed blackouts and social media blackouts around the world to determine the duration and extent of the restrictions.
“This allows us to precisely calculate the economic impact of each Internet shutdown through the COST tool. This tool was developed by the internet monitoring NGO Netblocks. It is based on indicators from the World Bank, ITU, Eurostat and the US Census.
“In our cost of internet shutdown reports, we include social media shutdowns, internet blackouts and severe ISP throttling in our calculations.”
According to the report, the economic cost of internet shutdowns was $82.7 billion in Nigeria by 2022. It read: “The Nigerian government has extended the Twitter ban imposed in June 2021 until January 2022.
“The ban came after a tweet by President Muhammadu Bihari was removed by Twitter for violating the platform’s rules. Although the Nigerian government announced plans to restore access to Twitter in October 2021, on the condition that the social media platform be used for “business and positive engagement”, the ban was not lifted until the following January will remove
“The 222-day ban cost the Nigerian economy $1.54 billion over two calendar years.”
