The splinternet: how online shutdowns are getting cheaper and easier to impose

What Iran has, a splinternet, is becoming reality for many millions of people. It is likely to get far worse. More than half of Russia’s regions are able to access only a limited, government-approved version of the internet through their mobile phones. The “great firewall of China” blocks most of the global internet, including sites such as Google and the Guardian. The Myanmar junta has experimented with targeted internet shutdowns and so recently have authorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan. For nearly two decades, the US backed a global effort to make it extremely difficult for governments to divide up the internet in this way. It hinged on funding tools built by groups worldwide to circumvent censorship. These made it very costly and very hard to shut down the internet entirely, and they ensured that governments that did seek to cut off their people often had to isolate themselves and their financial institutions as well. Like many US soft-power initiatives, the programme was imperfect, morally complex and at times at odds with the policies of other governments. Yet it is one foundation of what the internet is: a global commons. Today’s online world is dominated by large tech platforms and awash with illegal content and misinformation. But it is still a structure in which facts, ideas and information accessible from London are largely accessible from Delhi, Johannesburg and São Paulo as well. That could change rapidly.