The path to information in Venezuela is impeded by a combination of censorship, blockages and slow internet. The conventional media in the country has suffered censorship for years and some outlets lost their concession to broadcast, such as RCTV, the oldest television station in the country (1953-2006), which openly confronted the policies of then-president Hugo Chávez.
Reporting the news in Venezuela is not an easy task for the media since Chávez assumed the office in 1999. In addition to the case of RCTV, a large number of radio stations were also forced to close down, many newspapers stopped printing due to the lack of paper, and some international channels disappeared from the programming grid of cable television companies.
For this reason, the majority of the population reads the news through social media and digital newspapers. This is how the digital era began in Venezuela; not as part of the advancement of technology, but as a way to avoid blockages that got in the way of information. Unfortunately, this created a new form of censorship in the country.
Some websites are completely blocked, others are partially banned on a daily basis. Meanwhile Twitter, some Google services and other platforms present frequent crashes that make access impossible, especially on days of greater political and social upheaval in the country.
The problems that limit a decent connection grow greater every day. There is a less perceptible censorship, which prevents sites from loading due to the slowness of the internet. According to research conducted by the NGO Estrategia Ciudadana, based on several international studies, Venezuela ranks 184th in the world for internet speed.
The international internet observatory NetBlocks has recorded significant service failures in Venezuela. The organization, which monitors internet outages worldwide, has identified connection failures of 30%, 60% and even 98%.
Some blackouts are selective and premeditated, focusing on platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, during times when the political opposition has activities planned. Internet access restrictions are not fully effective, but digital platforms present instability that prevents users from connecting when they want to.
Inaccessibility and blockades in Venezuela are mostly present in the public telecommunications company CANTV. According to NetBlocks data, restrictions in Venezuela have escalated in recent years. Network measurements reveal similar internet censorship during days of political turmoil, some of the incidents range from minutes to hours and are unprecedented in NetBlocks archives.
The largest internet infrastructure disruptions have occurred during the 2019 and 2020 electricity blackouts. In 2019, four national mega power outages occurred, leaving the country without energy for days. During the first one, at the beginning of March, there was a 98% drop in internet service in the first few hours, reaching in the following days a fluctuation between 12% and 30% of connectivity, until the complete restoration of the service.
This electrical failure was the largest in the country, with a continuous interruption of between five and seven days in most states. At the end of March, two similar power blackouts occurred, the third lasting four days. Disinformation was one of the main characteristics, all communications were interrupted and few independent radio stations reported on the events, but nobody handled an official version.
In the months that followed, other general blackouts occurred, as well as daily power cuts that left part of the country without electricity for hours and without access to communication networks. These events, linked to blockades and censorship, have caused the use of the internet to be neither stable nor open. According to the organization Freedom House, Venezuela is considered one of the countries without freedom on the net.
The internet has also been used as a weapon to hunt down users and journalists who report on social and political issues occurring in the country. In the last few years, arbitrary detentions have been increasing, for instance, in 2019 the journalist Luis Carlos Díaz was detained and later conditionally released, under measures of presentation and prohibition to leave the country, just for publishing a video about the adequate responses to a cyber blackout. The arrest came days after Díaz was accused of being a “fascist influencer” on a television program of the Maduro government, where the video was also presented as part of a conspiracy to allegedly cause the breakdown of electricity service in Venezuela.
Selective censorship is observed by monitors such as NetBlocks; in fact, their spokespersons have stated that Venezuela represents a unique case where temporary, reactive and frequent filters are deployed. The blockade is not total, and as a consequence, the government can take advantage of the service whenever needed.
Users have learned, over time, to employ alternatives in order to access certain sites. For this purpose, they change DNS servers, use open-source browsers and add programs and applications to their devices to encrypt internet traffic.
Meanwhile, in 2018, Google launched an application for Android to avoid censorship. Although it was developed to operate around the world, the company held a dialogue with Venezuelan journalists and computer experts to learn about the obstacles to accessing information and, in this way, to create solutions that work in favor of freedom of expression.
Image credit: Michael Geiger