On the extreme side, regimes like China and
North Korea exert tight control over what
regular citizens can access online. Elsewhere,
service blockages are more limited, often cutting
off common social platforms around elections
and times of mass protests.
There was no formal organizer of protests;
people found out about the rallying points over
social media, mostly on Twitter and Facebook,
the platforms most used by Cubans. The
thousands of Cubans who took to the streets
— protesters and pro-government activists
alike — wielded smartphones to capture
images and send them to relatives and friends
or post them online.
Cuban authorities were blocking Facebook,
WhatsApp, Instagram and Telegram, said Alp
Toker, director of Netblocks, a London-based
internet monitoring firm. “This does seem to
be a response to social media-fueled protest,”
he said. Twitter did not appear to be blocked,
though Toker noted Cuba could cut it off if it
wants to.
While the recent easing of access by Cuban
authorities to the internet has increased
social media activity, Toker said, the level of
censorship has also risen. Not only does the
cutoff block out external voices, he said, it also
squelches “the internal voice of the population
who have wanted to speak out.”
Internet access in Cuba has been expensive
and relatively rare until recently. The country
was “basically offline” until 2008, then gradually
entered a digital revolution, said Ted Henken,
a Latin America expert at Baruch College,
City University of New York. The biggest