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IN EARLY June, protesters took to the streets of Sudan鈥檚 capital, Khartoum, to demand a civilian-led government. Shortly afterwards, Sudan鈥檚 ruling military junta turned off the internet.

This isn鈥檛 an isolated incident. There have been more than 100 internet shutdowns around the world this year already. Not a month has gone by without one in effect somewhere. And the tactic seems to be growing in frequency.

Governments usually claim the measure is taken to prevent people from using social media to coordinate violent protests or riots. But growing evidence suggests that shutdowns aren鈥檛 effective for this and also have other negative effects.

There are essentially two ways to cut off the internet. The first is a routing disruption, which disconnects an entire network, as used recently in Mauritania.

The second is packet filtering, which blocks requests to access certain websites 鈥� for example, any address containing the word 鈥淔acebook鈥�. These selective shutdowns are used to seal off certain services, as happened in Chad in 2018, after the president recommended reforms that would enable him to stay in power until 2033. Blocked platforms included Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp, which were only reinstated a few weeks ago after 16 months.

Both these types of shutdowns involve internet service providers (ISPs) taking orders from a government. For this reason, they mostly occur in parts of Africa and Asia where government transparency is low.

The first major episode came in 2011, when the Egyptian government cut off the internet and mobile networks for five days during the Arab Spring. But it wasn鈥檛 until 2016 that some African governments began to implement shutdowns regularly, beginning when the Republic of the Congo blocked all telecommunications for a week during its presidential election, says Julie Owono at Internet Without Borders in France. 鈥淚t鈥檚 even countries which have never had censorship issues, like Benin in West Africa,鈥� she says.

Globally, there have been 115 shutdowns so far this year, says Melody Patry at digital rights advocacy group Access Now. The organisation has been monitoring shutdowns for several years. By its count, there were 196 in 2018, up from 75 in 2016 (see 鈥�Graph鈥�).

To understand shutdowns and their impact, researchers need to be able to detect and track them, but this isn鈥檛 easy. Sometimes, all it takes to turn off the internet is a phone call, 鈥渟o there is no paper trail鈥�, says Jan Rydzak at Stanford University in California.

A routing disruption can be spotted as a local drop in web traffic. But detecting packet filtering is more difficult, and requires active probing, for example sending information to a network and seeing what happens.

Rydzak has studied India, which has had more local shutdowns than anywhere else in the world: 134 in 2018. The reasons for many of these haven鈥檛 been explained, but those that are officially acknowledged are usually said to be necessary for stifling violent collective action, says Rydzak.

However, his research suggests that blocking access to the internet and social media seems to achieve the opposite. Analysing 22,891 protests in India between 2016 and 2017, Rydzak found that local internet shutdowns tended to be associated with an escalation of riots and protests. 鈥淩iots disproportionately increased in number in conditions of an information vacuum,鈥� he says.

Rydzak thinks this is because shutdowns can push people towards violent tactics that rely less on coordination.

鈥淩umours don鈥檛 stop when the internet is being cut off and actually that can escalate conflicts even further,鈥� says Patry.

While many shutdowns coincide with civil unrest, they are also increasingly occurring during elections. Both Patry and Owono say they have noticed a recent rise in officials saying that shutdowns had been implemented as a way to stop the spread of misinformation.

It is certainly true that hate speech and fake news can circulate on social media. Last year, a spate of lynchings in India, for example, was reportedly fuelled by false rumours spread via WhatsApp.

At face value, the spread of false information may provide a justification for temporary shutdowns. But Owono says the concern is that, in reality, governments are using them as an excuse for censorship. Closing social media may be a way for a corrupt government to stifle transparency ahead of elections.

In other cases, shutdowns may be a tool to conceal human rights violations. A study of network disruptions in Syria found that coincide with significantly higher levels of state repression, notably in areas where government forces were actively fighting rebels.

Similarly, Human Rights Watch has denounced shutdowns in Rakhine and Chin states in Myanmar, where there is conflict between the state military and an armed local group.

But shutdowns aren鈥檛 always political. Algeria, Iraq and Uganda have all temporarily shut down the internet during high school exams, ostensibly to prevent questions being leaked. In Brazil, judges enforced brief shutdowns of WhatsApp in 2015 and 2016 after the company didn鈥檛 comply with requests for data as part of a criminal investigation.

However, while shutdowns are clearly a tempting measure for many governments, they aren鈥檛 without costs. 鈥淎nytime there鈥檚 a disruption in the internet or in mobile networks, it鈥檚 going to have a major impact on businesses,鈥� says Darrell West at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC.

Examining the impact of 81 short-term shutdowns in 19 nations from July 2015 to June 2016, West found an estimated total GDP loss of $2.4 billion.

Disrupted communications hit healthcare too. Doctors in rural Cameroon, for instance, sometimes use WhatsApp to coordinate supplies of medicines, and shutdowns hamper this.

But like almost every internet restriction, there are ways around a partial shutdown. Internet Without Borders provides people with information on how to use tools such as virtual private networks or the Tor browser to circumvent a social media blackout. These mask a person鈥檚 browsing activity, preventing governments from restricting the content they can access based on their geographical location.

鈥淚ndia has had more local internet shutdowns than anywhere else in the world: 134 in 2018 alone鈥�

Legal action can work too. 鈥淪ometimes you do have constitutional protections that make a shutdown illegal,鈥� says Patry.

In January, a Zimbabwe court ordered internet services to be restored following a challenge from human rights lawyers. And in June, a Sudanese lawyer successfully challenged a national telecoms operator to restore the internet, which has resulted in services gradually being restored. Patry says legal challenges like this will be increasingly used to hold authorities accountable.

But in some cases 鈥� such as when governments are handling the aftermath of a terrorist attack (see 鈥�Living through a shutdown鈥�) 鈥� the most effective measure may be to demonstrate to governments that shutdowns simply don鈥檛 fix the problem of violence, and may in fact make it worse.

鈥淚 think it鈥檚 important to target the self-interest of these governments,鈥� says Rydzak. 鈥淲e need to show them that, for their own purposes, shutdowns are not the right way to approach societal problems.鈥�