Internet Fragmentation and the Record 313 Shutdowns of 2025

The global internet remains technically connected, but its users increasingly encounter different networks in practice. Access Now’s 2025 shutdown record documented 313 disruptions in 52 countries—the highest annual total in its dataset—and 75 disruptions in 33 countries were still continuing as 2026 began.

That strengthens the original diagnosis that governments are reshaping online life around national priorities. The important correction is that “fragmentation” covers several very different actions: cutting connectivity, blocking services, controlling infrastructure, imposing local rules and, in the European Union, requiring dominant platforms to become more interoperable. Those measures should not be treated as politically or practically equivalent.

What a fragmented internet means

The internet is not splitting neatly into separate physical machines, one for every country. Its basic protocols still let compatible networks exchange traffic across borders. What is breaking apart is the expectation that a person can use the same services, reach the same information and retain the same rights wherever a connection exists.

Fragmentation can occur at several layers:

Connectivity: authorities or other actors disable mobile data, broadband or particular communications channels.
Reachability: a connection remains available, but websites, messaging services or circumvention tools cannot be reached.
Platform access: app distribution, payments, accounts or features vary according to national law and corporate compliance decisions.
Data and identity: local storage, identification or age-verification requirements determine who may participate and what information a provider must retain.

These layers produce different consequences. A complete shutdown interrupts almost everything at once; a platform block targets particular communications; a compliance regime may change product design without preventing access. Using one dramatic label for all of them obscures both the severity of the restriction and the remedy that might address it.

The clearest deterioration is forced disconnection

The 2025 shutdown count supplies the strongest new evidence that national and territorial controls are becoming harder to dismiss as isolated incidents. Of the 313 documented disruptions, 125 were associated with conflict across 14 countries. Fourteen shutdowns in seven countries targeted low-Earth-orbit satellite connections, compared with four such cases in 2024, indicating that alternative infrastructure does not automatically escape political control.

The trend also extends beyond temporary blackouts. A shutdown that persists into another year can affect ordinary communication, education, banking, reporting and access to emergency information. For a user, this is the most severe form of fragmentation: the question is no longer which platform works locally, but whether a usable connection exists at all.

The broader rights picture points in the same direction. Freedom House’s 2025 assessment found a fifteenth consecutive year of declining global internet freedom; conditions worsened in 28 of the 72 countries it assessed, while 17 improved during its June 2024–May 2025 coverage period. Its framework measures obstacles to access, limits on content and violations of user rights, so the finding reaches beyond shutdowns alone.

National rules are not automatically digital walls

Governments can intervene in digital markets for reasons other than suppressing communication. Privacy protection, competition enforcement and consumer rights also create territorial rules, but their purpose and effect must be examined separately from censorship or disconnection.

The European Union offers the clearest counterexample to the claim that every local rule inevitably closes the internet. In its first review of the Digital Markets Act, the European Commission reported in April 2026 that alternative app stores had launched, users had gained more choices over default browsers and search engines, and new messaging applications had appeared through interoperability obligations.

The Commission is evaluating its own legislation, so its claims should not be mistaken for an independent verdict on every consequence of the law. Nevertheless, the mechanism matters: an interoperability requirement attempts to open a dominant ecosystem, whereas a shutdown removes communication. Both alter how a global service operates inside a jurisdiction, but only one is designed to increase connections between competing services.

What users and businesses experience at the border

For individuals, nationalization appears as inconsistency. An account may remain valid while a feature disappears; a service may load on one network but not another; privacy and identification requirements may change after a move. The familiar interface of a global platform can therefore conceal a locally determined set of permissions.

For developers and smaller companies, the cost is duplication. A product intended for several markets may need distinct distribution channels, moderation procedures, data practices and contingency plans. Large platforms are better positioned to absorb those differences, so rules intended to constrain them can sometimes raise barriers for smaller competitors unless portability and interoperability are built into the system.

Publishers, creators and civil-society groups face another risk: dependence on a single platform or connection provider becomes a territorial vulnerability. An audience accumulated globally can become unreachable locally through a network restriction, store decision or platform block. The practical unit of reach is no longer simply “online”; it is a combination of country, network, service and account status.

The American web gave way to competing models

The early commercial web often looked American because US companies supplied many of its most visible search, social, advertising and cloud services. That dominance encouraged a misleading assumption: global use of the same products meant that governments had accepted a permanently borderless political space.

The emerging system is more complicated than a contest between US platforms and national substitutes. States can influence physical connections, service availability, corporate obligations and user identity without building a complete domestic replacement for the web. They can also project restrictions outward through sanctions, infrastructure dependencies or demands placed on multinational providers.

The result is not a finished collection of sealed national internets. It is a shared technical network overlaid with increasingly unequal conditions of access. Some boundaries are blunt instruments of repression; others are regulatory experiments that may increase choice; many combine security, economic and political goals. The decisive question is therefore not whether a government has acted, but whether its action preserves connection, protects rights and allows people to move between services.

How to identify the kind of fragmentation involved

A useful analysis starts with the observable restriction rather than a government’s preferred label for it. Ask what has become unavailable, who imposed the change, how long it lasts and whether users have a workable alternative.

If the underlying connection disappears, it is a shutdown even when authorities describe it as a temporary security measure.
If only particular destinations fail, examine blocking orders, network interference and platform withdrawal separately.
If a rule changes product design, ask whether it increases interoperability and user control or makes participation conditional on surveillance and identification.
If a domestic alternative grows while foreign competitors are throttled or banned, adoption figures alone do not demonstrate voluntary preference.

This distinction replaces the nostalgic story of one lost “global village” with a more precise account. The internet still crosses borders, but access, rights and market power increasingly do not. The record shutdown total makes the human cost measurable; Europe’s interoperability experiment shows that national intervention can also push in the opposite direction.

The Internet Now Changes at the Border—313 Shutdowns Show the Cost