Beyond the money

January 12, 2025

Understanding the human cost of internet shutdowns

Beyond the money


T

he news that Pakistan suffered most financial losses from internet shutdowns and disruptions in 2024 in the world comes as no surprise for anyone who has spent more than a day last year trying to access the internet in the country. The year started with shutdowns of social media platforms in the lead-up to the elections. Mobile networks were shutdown on the polling day. X (formerly, Twitter) has been banned in the country for a long time. July onwards, there has been an unprecedented internet slowdown. It was the first time internet speeds and the efficacy of internet shutdowns were discussed in the mainstream, a positive development for awareness of internet access as a right. However, the lens through which the issue was viewed was primarily an economic one.

The material reality of the internet is no doubt an important aspect. However, much of the discussion regarding internet shutdowns and attempts to measure the ‘cost’ of a shutdown takes at face value the unqualified benefit of the internet in its current form. This economic discourse of the internet is fraught with several underlying concerns. Firstly, while many commentators have rightly pointed out the impact of internet shutdowns on Pakistan’s small but important tech industry and the freelancer economy, when we have discussions, we are taking at face value a laissez-faire approach to the internet. Economic experts and business leaders wax lyrical about how the internet creates “employment opportunities.” However, there is very little critique of the exploitative and precarious nature of these ‘opportunities.’

Everyone’s favourite example in the media has been working class workers dependent on applications such as Careem, In-Drive or Food Panda; or women running online businesses. However, there is little substantive engagement with the economic reality of these workers and the role of technology in their unfair treatment. Ride-sharing applications present a sanitised front for an extremely exploitative profit model that incentivises long working hours and provides little protection to drivers who sign up for these applications. Critical research by Fairwork and the Centre for Labour Research has found that working conditions of six internet-enabled service delivery applications in Pakistan fail to meet fair work standards. While internet access is important, when we repeatedly parrot economic talking points, we gloss over the complicated relationship many of us have with the internet and the true ‘cost’ of internet shutdowns.

The human cost of internet shutdowns alone should be enough for us to be alarmed about the state of the internet in Pakistan.

A major reason for discourse centred solely on profit models is the people the mainstream media and the state choose to platform. Industry ‘experts,’ who openly acquiesce to the state’s draconian internet regulations, have become the go-to stakeholders in this conversation. If we want to measure and understand the true cost of internet shutdowns, we can benefit from hearing from people whose daily wage is actually impacted. Implicated in that conversation are not only the state and its surveillance machinery responsible for these shutdowns, but also the companies and platforms exploiting the workers. This can also be seen in the techno-solutions often presented by these experts, such as calls for the Elon Musk-owned Starlink to be made available in Pakistan without any reflection on the implications of a recommendation that leads to further private, for-profit capture of the internet.

Some digital rights activists have also been touting the language of ‘economic good’ in order to make their case against internet shutdowns more palatable. This has been the result of the corrosion of civil society space and demonisation of rights activists in Pakistan, which has diluted calls for the internet as a fundamental right and critical critiques of the status quo on the internet landscape.

The cost of internet shutdowns can truly be seen in the panic of a woman dependent on ride-hailing apps, when she can’t get home along with the economic anxiety of a driver forced to sit at home whenever there is a protest in any part of the country. It includes the unquantifiable loss political organisers and activists face when they can’t use social media platforms to campaign for essential social justice issues. One must also account for the helplessness of less tech-savvy older people whose voice notes can no longer be delivered over WhatsApp. The human cost of internet shutdowns is enough for us to be alarmed about the state of the internet in Pakistan.

We must also recognise that internet shutdowns are nothing new. A near five-year mobile phone internet shutdown in the tribal districts never got the same attention. Mobile internet is still frequently shut down in several parts of Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over security concerns. Students from Gilgit-Baltistan have been protesting for years about dismal internet speeds. There has been very little conversation about the legal, political and infrastructural realities behind internet shutdowns. While the economy is an important aspect, there is much that we don’t talk about when we talk about finances first.


The writer is a researcher and campaigner on human and digital rights issues

Beyond the money