Digital rights group Access Now is marking the 10th anniversary of its #KeepItOn campaign by giving voice to those affected by internet shutdowns
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Felicia Anthonio first encountered the impact of internet shutdowns in 2017. While working as an intern tracking press freedom violations, she was prevented from verifying information on the ground or contacting people in the area when disruptions were imposed across Anglophone Cameroon.
Certain stories struck her particularly hard. "Most of the young technologists who were building their careers in this particular region had to leave the country," Anthonio told TechRadar.
Almost a decade later, Anthonio serves as the #KeepItOn global campaign manager at digital rights organization Access Now.
To mark the 10th anniversary of the coalition's work, the team has launched the "Sound of the Silenced" initiative. It features eight firsthand accounts from people across the globe, illustrating how shutdowns isolate communities and endanger lives.
From a teacher in Gaza left without news of her family after a bombing, to an activist in Myanmar forced to travel by motorbike just to find signal and call for help during an airstrike — the campaign highlights the devastating, multifaceted ways internet shutdowns harm communities around the world.
TechRadar spoke with Anthonio to look back at the coalition's decade of work and explore what the years ahead may have in store.
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The #KeepItOn coalition’s first priority was establishing a definition for the worrying trend of governments deliberately disrupting citizens' internet access.
Before the campaign launched, human rights advocates had struggled to categorize these state actions, even as politicians realized their strategic power.
The first recorded shutdown occurred in Guinea in 2007, ordered by the president under the guise of "national security" to suppress protests over economic hardship.
Two years later, Iran adopted the same playbook to crush Green Movement protests following disputed elections in June. Then, in 2011, Egypt pulled the plug to suppress widespread protests against Hosni Mubarak’s regime.
Throughout these events, there were neither coordinated efforts to fight them nor a clear definition of what constituted an internet shutdown.
