Global Citizen #ShowupVote and the United States Election

Ahead of the 2016 United States elections, Global Citizen launched its “Show Up and Vote” campaign to encourage young Americans to vote. In addition to an online campaign, represented by the hashtag #ShowupVote, Global Citizen hosted a series of events and concerts with high-profile artists.

Psiphon #ShowupVote Promotion During Elections

In the week ahead of the election, Psiphon promoted the #ShowupVote campaign to our US audience,
showing a selection of images and a brief paragraph explaining the importance of the project.

In the final two days ahead of the election, the promotion was changed to ensure maximum visibility of the #ShowupVote content.

As election day ended, Psiphon followed this up by taking users to Global Citizen’s live coverage, giving them a chance to follow the results as they came in.

Overall, Global Citizen’s content was seen 1.5 million times in the US.

Worldwide Interest in U.S. Elections

In highly censored regions, during national and international news events, it is common for the use of circumvention tools to increase as people attempt to acquire news from a variety of sources. The U.S. election was no exception.

There was an increase in use of Psiphon in many countries, including from Vietnam, Russia, Iran, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, during the lead-up to and on the day of the election. The increase was most notable from China, where live-streaming coverage of the U.S. election was banned and TV networks were told to avoid “excessive” coverage of the event.

Social Media and Internet Ban in Turkey

Following the detainment of 12 pro-Kurdish lawmakers from the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) in the early hours of November 4 th , Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, WhatsApp and Skype were blocked in Turkey . There were reports that Turk Telekom internet provider completely disabled access to the internet or throttled the connection to the point that it was impossible to connect. Despite lack of official decision about the restrictions, and BTK’s explanation that there was a technical problem throughout Turkey, Prime Minister Binali Yildirim made a statement later in the day and said “For security reasons, these kinds of measures can be taken time to time. These are temporary measures. Everything goes back to normal after the danger is eliminated.” Social media and internet bans ended the following evening in most of the country, but there were still some short-term connection problems during the weekend in some regions, and it was reported that some Turk Telekom users

Psiphon Usage Surges as Brazil Blocks WhatsApp

At 9PM ET on December 16th WhatsApp was blocked in Brazil . The ban came after a judge ordered that the messenger app be blocked for 48 hours when the company refused to hand over private user information related to a criminal case. For months, Brazilian telecommunications companies have been attempting to shut down WhatsApp because it provides free messaging and voice services. WhatsApp is the most popular messenger service in Brazil and telecoms blame it for luring millions away from paid cell phone use. Internet users in Brazil reacted strongly to the ban, criticizing the decision to block WhatsApp widely on social media. Millions turned to alternate messenger services and shared circumvention techniques over social media. Psiphon was praised by people in Brazil for being free, open source, and able to keep them connected throughout the blocking event. Psiphon’s surge capacity was able to cope with the increased demand, with peak data use of more than 8x that of a normal day. Psip

Amid major network disruptions, 1.76M Psiphon users in Belarus

The Psiphon network supported a peak 1.76 million daily active users during significant network interference that started August 9th, a figure that represents nearly 1 in every 3 internet users. A large-scale disruption to international internet access was observed in Belarus, beginning during the contested presidential election on August 9th. Widespread filtering was reported across all Belarusian networks, affecting popular messaging apps including Telegram, Viber, and WhatsApp; social media platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Youtube; major app markets including Google Play and the App Store; email providers Gmail, Mail.ru, and Yandex; maps, banking, online media, and many other services. Rolling blackouts of the mobile networks also occurred nightly between 6PM and 6AM. The majority of VPNs were reportedly blocked as a result of generalized SSL/TLS filtering. Tor direct connections were disrupted by the increased network change, while Tor bridge users reached a peak 8,0

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