Hello,

It's 404 day and I'd like to announce that the OONI team is creating a new methodology for investigating internet blackouts worldwide!

OONI Probe is designed to measure various forms of censorship, but internet blackouts (i.e. when the internet is switched off completely) is not currently one of them. We have therefore relied on third party data sources (such as Google traffic and BGP announcement data published by RIPE) to investigate internet blackouts. While these data sources are extremely useful, the problem is that it's challenging to drill down to internet blackouts that occur on a regional level, and to collect more fine-grained metrics.

We therefore thought: Why not engage our existing, global OONI Probe community to investigate internet blackouts on the ground?

To this end, we're experimenting with the creation of a new methodology that will be included in future OONI Probe mobile app releases, enabling community members to participate in internet blackout investigations.

If you're interested in learning all the technical details (and the reasoning behind our choices), please read our documentation: https://ooni.torproject.org/post/investigating-internet-blackouts/Investigat...

Otherwise, please read our announcement blog (https://ooni.torproject.org/post/investigating-internet-blackouts/) and share the word (https://twitter.com/OpenObservatory/status/981554659763638273).

This methodology is quite experimental. We'd appreciate any feedback you can provide!

Thanks,

Maria (on behalf of the OONI team).