Seven years, 60 countries, 935 internet shutdowns: How authoritarian regimes found an off switch for dissent: “…Russia is a pioneer in the use of these tools but not an outlier. The technologies it uses are proliferating, creeping into internet infrastructure all over the world, helped by multinational companies that have turned censorship into an off-the-shelf product. Censored Planet, an internet observatory in the U.S., has tracked more than 100 countries where internet censorship has worsened in the past few years. And even as technically sophisticated methods for information control become easily available, more and more governments are turning to blunt-force tactics, shutting down the internet entirely in response to political opposition or social pressure. Over the last six months, Rest of World spoke to more than 70 technologists, telecomms experts, activists, and journalists from around the world to track how governments’ control over the internet has grown and evolved during the past decade. Their testimony shows that the free, open, global internet is under severe threat. Telecomms blackouts and mass censorship risk fragmenting the internet and even undermining its physical integrity. These threats come in many forms, but most of the experts we spoke to trace them back to a watershed moment, 11 years ago in Cairo, when, facing a mass protest movement that was evolving and growing online, the Egyptian government turned off the internet..”