Government Internet Shutdowns Cost $19.7B in 2025 1/9/26, 2:49 PM based on indicators from the World Bank, ITU, Eurostat, and the US Census. WHAT’S INCLUDED IN OUR CALCULATIONS: Internet blackouts: government-ordered, complete loss of internet access. These outages can’t be directly circumvented. Social media shutdowns: blocking platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok, or X. These restrictions can often be bypassed using a VPN. Severe throttling: speeds reduced to 2G levels, allowing only SMS and voice calls. In practical terms, this functions as an internet blackout. This report excludes social media shutdowns once they exceed 365 days in duration. After this threshold, we classify the restriction as permanent censorship and assume the economic impact diminishes as users migrate to alternative platforms. For example, the ongoing social media bans in Russia, which drove the record-breaking global cost spike in 2022, continue to be excluded from our calculations. Similarly, for the purposes of this year’s report, Myanmar’s restriction of X (Twitter) was only counted up to the one-year anniversary of renewed blocks of the platform in February 2024. Cost of Internet Shutdowns 2019-2024 2024: 167 shutdowns across 28 countries lasted 70,451 hours and cost $7.69 billion. Pakistan was the most affected, with losses of $1.62 billion. 2023: 196 shutdowns in 25 countries lasted 58,807 hours and cost $9.13 billion. Russia again incurred the highest losses ($4.02 billion). https://www.top10vpn.com/research/cost-of-internet-shutdowns/ Page 5 of 33