Imagine a situation where the internet appears to be working, but websites won’t open beyond the first screen, messaging apps are intermittent, and businesses are constantly changing.
According to the authors of a recent annual report on intentional communications disruptions, this is exactly what happened in 2025 in many countries, and the global economy paid the price: $19.7 billion. This represents a 156% increase over the previous year.
The paper collected and tallied all major intentional internet shutdowns and social media blocks for 2025. The authors say they recorded 212 major government-imposed restrictions in 28 countries over the course of the year . The total duration of communications shutdowns exceeded 120,000 hours, approximately 70% more than in 2024. An estimated 798 million people were affected by these restrictions.
It’s important to note that these aren’t just classic “kill switches,” where the internet completely disappears. The report distinguishes between complete shutdowns, individual platform blocks, and severe traffic restrictions near 2G levels, where voice and SMS remain active, making the normal functioning of modern services virtually impossible. In 2025, a total of 55,700 hours of complete shutdowns, 54,000 hours of social media blocks, and 12,700 hours of similar slowdowns were recorded. This last category accounted for approximately one-tenth of all hours of intentional disruption and, according to the authors, has returned to the arsenal of large-scale censorship.
According to estimates, the greatest economic damage was inflicted on Russia : $11.9 billion. Venezuela ($1.91 billion) and Myanmar ($1.89 billion) followed. The report specifically describes the wave of Russian restrictions, which it says began in May and was characterized not so much by a single “blackout” as by a series of technically precise interventions. The authors call one of the most notorious tactics the “16KB Curtain” : access to several resources, including those hosted by Cloudflare, was restricted so that only the first 16 kilobytes of data could be downloaded.
Although the connection is technically intact, most modern websites and services become virtually unusable due to these restrictions . The authors acknowledge that such measures are difficult to accurately quantify in monetary terms, and therefore define the damage resulting from the “curtain” as approximate.
Looking at platform-specific bans, the report shows that X (Twitter) recorded the longest block time in 2025, at 18,354 hours. Telegram ranked second with 16,990 hours, and TikTok third with 14,646 hours . The article provides examples of how long-term bans in individual countries “accumulate” hours over the course of a year, and how, instead of an immediate ban, authorities sometimes opt for a gradual deterioration in service quality. For example, it describes the situation with WhatsApp in Russia: initially, restrictions on certain functions and protocols (including calls), then extension to various connection types, and, by the end of the year, the service becomes practically unusable for many users.
The authors link their calculation methodology to NetBlocks’ COST tool and a series of macro indicators, including data from the World Bank, the ITU, Eurostat, and the US Census Bureau. They also establish an important rule: social media blocks lasting more than 365 days are no longer considered “permanent censorship” in the report, as users migrate to alternative platforms and the economic impact changes. This is why, for example, long-standing bans in Russia do not add new “hours” to the annual statistics, even though they haven’t disappeared per se.
The report’s main conclusion is simple: Internet outages are not only becoming more frequent, but also more sophisticated . Instead of a sudden shift, the ” nearly working ” game is becoming increasingly evident, where the formal availability of connections masks the actual unavailability of services.
For businesses and consumers, this means one thing: the risk of digital disruption is moving from a rare emergency to something they will need to prepare for in advance.
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