Mauritius blocked social media ahead of 2024 general election

Yesterday, Mauritius blocked access to several social media platforms. This is the first time that we observed social media blocks in Mauritius through OONI data. Today, following widespread news media coverage and international advocacy pressure, the social media blocks in Mauritius were lifted.

On 1st November 2024, the Mauritius Information & Communication Technologies Authority (ICTA) announced that all Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Mauritius were instructed to temporarily suspend access to “all social media platforms” until 11th November 2024. Their communique did not specify which social media platforms ISPs in Mauritius were required to block access to, merely mentioning that the blocks were in response to “concerns regarding illegal postings that constitute a serious threat to national security and public safety” (while referencing related sections of the country’s ICT Act).

This is particularly interesting – and concerning – for two reasons:

• Vague social media blocking order. By instructing ISPs to block “all” social media platforms – without specifying which ones – authorities in Mauritius transferred the responsibility to ISPs to determine which platforms count as “social media” and to independently decide what to block. As a result, it was possible that different social media platforms would get blocked by different ISPs in the country. It was also possible that some ISPs may have ended up blocking many more platforms than other ISPs, in an attempt to be compliant with this vague and broad blocking order. In summary, the ICT Authority’s communique suggests that we could have expected to observe variance in terms of which social media platforms were blocked on different networks in the country.
• Timing of the blocks. These blocks follow a wiretapping scandal over the last two weeks, which involved around 20 conversations of politicians, police officers, lawyers, members of civil society, and journalists being leaked on social media. Interestingly, the ICT Authority instructed the blocking of social media platforms merely 10 days before the country heads to the polls for the 2024 general election – while citing “illegal postings” that appear to reference the leaked conversations. And the ICT Authority’s communique specified that the blocks would be lifted on 11th November 2024, which is one day after the country’s 2024 general election. All of this suggests that while the ICT Authority cited “national security and public safety” concerns, the social media blocks appear to have been politically motivated.

OONI data collected from Mauritius suggests that ISPs blocked access to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter/X, and Linkedin on 1st November 2024, and that the blocks were lifted by 7am UTC on 2nd November 2024. The following chart aggregates OONI measurement coverage from the testing of these platforms on a few networks in Mauritius over the last days.

As is evident, most measurements from the OONI Probe testing of www.facebook.com, www.instagram.com, www.tiktok.com, www.youtube.com, twitter.com, x.com, and www.linkedin.com presented anomalies on 1st November 2024, providing a signal of blocking. This signal is quite strong given that, comparatively, the tested domains were found accessible on 29th October 2024 (as illustrated in the above chart), and that the date of the anomalies (1st November 2024) correlates with the government’s social media blocking order. Moreover, the blocking of YouTube is further suggested by the Google Transparency Report, which shows a drop in YouTube traffic from Mauritius on the same day (1st November 2024).

However, it’s important to highlight that these domains received very limited OONI measurement coverage in recent months, limiting our ability to compare their testing over time and to explore the extent of social media blocks on all networks in Mauritius. The spike in OONI measurement coverage on 1st November 2024 was likely in response to the social media blocks. We frequently observe a spike in OONI measurement coverage when new blocks emerge around the world (likely because people feel more motivated to run OONI Probe when they experience blocks that impact them). For example, we recently saw a huge spike in OONI measurement coverage in El Salvador following the blocking of Telegram.

Even though relatively few OONI measurements are available from Mauritius (especially in comparison to other countries where we have large and stable coverage), those measurements provide a clear signal of social media blocking. Many anomalous OONI measurements show that the social media blocks were implemented by means of TLS interference, which means that ISPs interfered with the encrypted connection to those platforms in order to prevent access.

By inspecting the raw network measurement data, we observe that the connection was interfered with right after the Client Hello message (which is unencrypted) during the TLS handshake – resulting in a connection reset or timeout error. We are able to rule out the hypothesis that these errors were the result of transient network failures because the connections to the resolved IPs were successful, and the TLS connection failed right after the unencrypted Client Hello message. Inspecting encrypted traffic in order to selectively block connections to banned domains (specified in the unencrypted Client Hello message of the TLS handshake) is often performed by ISPs around the world through the use of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology.

Circumventing social media blocks in Mauritius appears to have been possible, as OONI data suggests that circumvention tools, Tor and Psiphon, as well as most VPN websites (at least those tested) were accessible in Mauritius on 1st November 2024. Beyond social media platforms, some community members in Mauritius also reported experiencing difficulty in accessing the Google Play Store, but very few OONI measurements are available, limiting our ability to corroborate potential blocking. In solidarity with the people of Mauritius, the global #KeepItOn advocacy campaign published a statement urging authorities to lift the block on social media.

On 2nd November 2024, the ICT Authority published a new communique announcing that the social media blocks had been lifted. This is corroborated by OONI data which shows that access to the blocked social media platforms was resumed by 7am UTC on 2nd November 2024. The unblocking of YouTube is further corroborated by the Google Transparency Report, which shows that YouTube traffic from Mauritius started to resume to normal levels today.

While the (unexpected!) unblocking of social media in Mauritius is great news, ongoing OONI Probe testing will help support future studies.

If you are in Mauritius, you can continue to test Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter/X, Linkedin, and Google Play by:

• Installing OONI Probe Mobile: https://ooni.org/install/mobile
• Tapping on this link and installing it in your OONI Probe mobile app: https://run.ooni.org/v2/10035

You can continue to monitor internet censorship in Mauritius through OONI data, which is published in real-time.

Note: This report was updated on 2nd November 2024 to include OONI data and information on the unblocking of social media platforms in Mauritius.