Government Internet Shutdowns Cost $7.69B in 2024 1/24/25, 11:17 AM Internet blackouts: internet access is completely cut off by the government. This extreme measure cannot be directly circumvented. Social media shutdowns: access to popular social media, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, TikTok or X is blocked. This can typically be circumvented by using a Virtual Private Network (VPN). Severe throttling: internet speeds have been reduced to 2G, which permits the use of SMS and voice calls only. This is an internet blackout in all but name. This year’s report continues with the approach, first introduced last year, of excluding social media blocks once they are over 365 days long. After this point, we consider it to be permanent censorship and assume the economic impact to have lessened as people are likely to have switched platforms by then. The social media bans in Russia, for example, that drove the record-breaking spike in costs to the world economy in 2022 continue to be excluded from our reports despite being ongoing. Note that we have included the current restrictions on X (Twitter) in Myanmar. Although these were first imposed in 2021, access to X had largely been restored by the start of this year. Since late February 2024, however, authorities in Myanmar once again started blocking access to X. As this was a new restriction, we treated it as a new shutdown and included it in our report. This is also the second year we have included blocks of newer social media platforms, such as TikTok and Telegram. This means we are now once again more easily able to make year-over-year comparisons. https://www.top10vpn.com/research/cost-of-internet-shutdowns/ Page 5 of 28