KARACHI: Pakistan leads the world in terms of financial losses suffered as a result of outages and closures of internet and social media applications last year.
Pakistan topped the charts with a cumulative financial impact of $1.62 billion.
This was higher than the cost in countries such as Sudan and Myanmar, which are devastated by civil wars.
The report, published by Top10VPN.com, an independent VPN reviewer, said the global Internet outage lasted 88,788 hours, causing a total financial loss of $7.69 billion.
Report claims online disruptions had $1.62 billion financial impact in 2024
The data, released Thursday, only estimated the cost of deliberate internet shutdowns (complete blackouts, social media shutdowns and throttling) by authorities, which occurred 167 times in 28 countries.
“This type of deliberate disruption is Internet censorship at its most extreme. Not only do they infringe on citizens’ digital rights, but they are also catastrophic acts of national economic self-sabotage, said Simon Migliano, head of research at Top10VPN.com.
While the total cost of internet outages dropped 15.8 percent in 2024 compared to last year, their duration increased 12 percent over the same period.
In 2023, 196 Internet outages in 25 countries for 79,238 hours cost $9.01 billion.
Pakistan
For Pakistan, Top10VPN.com tracked 18 cases of deliberate internet shutdown for three main reasons (elections, “information control,” and protests) in 2024.
These interruptions lasted 9,735 hours and affected 82.9 million users.
According to the estimate, the current shutdown of social media platform
This was followed by internet shutdowns by Balochistan authorities between July 16 and August 21 in response to the Baloch Yakjehti Committee’s protests in Gwadar. The closure, which lasted 864 hours, cost $11.8 million.
According to the report, the calculation was made using the Cost of Shutdown Tool (COST) developed by NetBlocks, an online monitor that tracks censorship and disruptions on the Internet.
COST estimates the potential economic cost of internet shutdowns using methodologies published by Washington DC-based think tank the Brookings Institution and CIPESA, a digital rights group funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID).
The 2016 Brookings study was based on the country’s GDP, the duration of the shocks, and the percentage of the population affected. The economic impact was derived from the country’s Internet economy.
The economic impact of the disruption of specific applications and services was estimated by calculating the dependence on them to contribute to GDP.
Global impact
Around the world, authorities shut down the Internet in 2024 for various reasons, including conflicts, censorship, to prevent exam cheating, protests, exams, and military coups.
Asia was by far the hardest hit region due to restrictions in Pakistan, Myanmar, Bangladesh and India. These were four of the six most affected countries in 2024.
Myanmar had the second most expensive lockdown, lasting 20,376 people and costing $1.58 billion. Sudan was third, with 12,707 hours of closure, which cost $1.12 billion. Venezuela ranked fourth with $1.12 billion, Bangladesh fifth with $796.6 million and India sixth with $322.9 million.
X was the most affected social media website, with total outages lasting 20,322 hours. It was followed by TikTok 8,115 hours, Signal 2,880 hours, Facebook 2,091 hours and Instagram 2,010 hours.
Published in Amanecer, January 4, 2025.
