Skip to main content

Facebook Disappears from the Internet; Globally, People Assume Censorship

Figure 1: People around the world naturally turned to Psiphon in response to the Facebook outage.

 Summary:

  • Psiphon’s global usage surged by 1.75 Million daily unique users during the Facebook outage on October 4th, 2021.
  • The rise was particularly acute in regions where Facebook platforms - including Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook itself - experience regular disruptions due to intermittent, but active censorship.
  • The regions that saw the most significant increases in usage include several countries where major censorship events have occurred within the past few years: Azerbaijan, Cuba, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iraq, Libya, Mexico, Sudan, and Syria.
  • Cuba showed a 4.6x increase from baseline usage, from 70,000 to over 300,000 daily unique users, reinforcing Psiphon’s important role in the region. In July 2021, the Psiphon network supported a surge of 1.4M users from Cuba during targeted blocking of social media and messaging platforms, a still-immanent threat from censors.
  • This demonstrates that Psiphon is a key and trusted global connectivity solution.

On October 4th, Facebook experienced a significant global outage affecting all of its platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. The outage, which lasted for at least 6 hours, was widely reported and had a dramatic impact on users of the platform.

In the days that followed, analysis by network monitors like Cloudflare and Kentik revealed how Facebook had, functionally, disappeared from the Internet. But for users, the inaccessibility of Facebook platforms evidently resonated with major censorship events that previously targeted these apps and websites. As before, enabling Psiphon followed as a natural response to the failure to access Facebook and its other products.

Psiphon’s global usage surged by over 1.75 Million users during the day of the outage. The growth was particularly acute in regions such as Cuba that have experienced significant, intermittent censorship events, but even in regions experiencing less direct censorship, such as Indonesia, significant growth was also observed.

The population scale uptake is a clear indication of the trust that Psiphon has accrued through its in supporting user connectivity globally. Since online censorship is likewise often opaque and difficult to attribute, the Facebook outage though of a technical in nature was in many ways not readily distinguishable from a blocking event. Often the last platform standing during censorship events, Psiphon adoption during the outage appears a natural and immediate reaction to presumed filtering.

The visualizations below show the surge in Psiphon daily active users in response to the outage.

Azerbaijan: 35,000 users (8x)
Cuba: 300,000 users (4.6x)
Ethiopia: 45,000 users (1.9x)
Indonesia: 250,000 users (1.9x)
Iraq: 210,000 users (11x)
Libya: 22,000 users (1.8x)
Mexico: 38,000 users (1.5x)
Sudan: 100,000 users (2.4x)
Syria: 225,000 users (1.5x)

Please note that the data shown can be accessed through Psiphon’s public data access portal, https://psix.ca. The Psiphon data portal is part of our full and ongoing commitment to open source software and open data.

Popular posts from this blog

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
Read more

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
Read more

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
Read more