#Slack starts massive outage Offline

On the following day, the Open Observatory documented blockages of social media that continued throughout the week. At first, it was just down for 30 minutes then we observed sporadic and limited outages over the next several hours. As these protests grew, the country’s internet went completely offline. On Sunday, July 11, Cubans in cities across the island nation spilled out into the streets in unprecedented numbers to protest an authoritarian government that has been in power since 1959. It’s especially worrisome that, from this, other embattled authoritarian regimes may draw the conclusion that shutdowns work, given the president’s re-election. Peter Micek of Access Now and I co-wrote a blog post stressing that the campaign to combat shutdowns is far from over and needs more support.

Sadly, the disruption came as little surprise to observers, who anticipated and tried to prevent the internet blockage. A vote which resulted in the re-election of President Museveni, extending his 36-year rule over the East African country.

#Slack starts massive outage Offline

Uganda was almost completely offline for five days around the day of the vote. It signaled the beginning of the era of the large-scale, government-directed internet shutdown that we presently find ourselves in. This outage took place almost 10 years to the day after the internet shutdown in Egypt during the Arab Spring.Įgypt’s shutdown was a watershed moment for the internet community. That was when the government of Uganda cut the country’s internet services in the days around a national presidential election. The first major outage on our list occurred in January.