DigiSense: Enforced Silence Through Internet Shutdowns

Photo by Katrin Bolovtsova

 When people want dissent to be heard, they look for ways to carry it beyond their immediate surroundings. For decades, the internet has been that tool. It connects people from one small village to the rest of the country, and from one country to the rest of the world.

So, when the Iranian government shut down internet access on January 8, it was not only an effort to prevent mass mobilization and global attention amid mounting street protests. It also served a more consequential purpose: cutting off the flow of information that could expose attempts to silence growing political unrest.

By cutting off contact with the outside world, images, videos, and firsthand accounts became far less likely to reach journalists, human rights groups, or the international public. In this enforced silence, acts of brutality can occur with greater secrecy, while accountability is delayed or denied.

The false belief behind this tactic is familiar. If anger cannot be seen, documented, or verified beyond a country’s borders, it will lose force—even if the grievances remain. If repression has no visible face, is there any reason for the world to believe it is happening at all?

According to reports by Iran International, allegations of mass killings and widespread arrests emerged between January 8 and 9, the same period when internet access began to be severely restricted. Many of those reportedly affected were young people under 30.

Because internet access was cut at the very start of this period, these claims cannot yet be independently verified. Images cannot be uploaded. Witnesses cannot easily reach journalists. What reaches the outside world arrives in fragments—delayed and incomplete.

For Iranians, this experience is painfully familiar. In 2019, during nationwide protests triggered by fuel price increases, the government imposed a near-total internet shutdown that lasted around one week. For several days, Iran was almost completely cut off from the global internet. Social media went dark. Uploading photos or videos became nearly impossible.

During that week, reports of violence were scarce and fragmented. Only after internet access was restored did the scale of what had happened begin to emerge. Later investigations showed that hundreds of people had been killed.

This time, experts believe the shutdown could last weeks, if not months. Which brings us to the question: can a prolonged internet shutdown erase evidence of brutality and strip people of their ability to communicate?

History suggests otherwise. The events of 2019 already proved that shutting down access does not erase dissent. With a longer shutdown now in place, it appears that Iranians are not backing down.  But repression and brutality reshape communication. When the state moves to silence people, communication itself often becomes harder to suppress than the systems designed to control it. Enforced silence often pushes people to look beyond what is immediately available or officially allowed. People are forced to find other paths and rely more on collective effort. They wait when they must, and speak when they can.

People are reminded that technology was never designed to belong to them. It is infrastructure first, power second, and only sometimes a public good. Its sophistication makes it useful for organizing, but also for modernizing repression and limiting the ability to record brutality as it happens.

This exposes a contradiction that stems from even deeper conflicts. The more advanced our technology becomes, the more fragile our freedom of expression and our ability to document events appear to be. Tools that allow people to communicate faster and more efficiently across borders are the very same tools that can be switched off, restricted, or controlled at scale. What connects the world can also be used to isolate it. History has taught people that access exists only until the state decides it threatens stability. So, those under the worst of conditions learn to communicate better within these constraints. 

Economic hardship, rising prices, and demands for accountability do not disappear when communication is cut. They remain—unseen, unheard, and unresolved. And unresolved problems have a way of returning, often louder, angrier, and far harder to contain.#nordis.net