Ethiopia blocked social media amid church split tensions

Starting on 9th February 2023, amid church split tensions and calls for anti-government protests, OONI data shows that Ethiopia blocked access to Facebook, Telegram, TikTok and YouTube. The blocks appear to have been in place until 17th July 2023.

The above chart shows that the OONI Probe testing of telegram.org, www.facebook.com, www.tiktok.com and www.youtube.com presented anomalies between February 2023 to July 2023, providing a signal of blocking. An analysis of these anomalies reveals that the connections timed out after sending the first TLS handshake message (ClientHello).

Overall, the blocking of these platforms is suggested by the fact that they all consistently presented anomalies (with the same connection timeout errors during the TLS handshake) during the same period (between 9th February 2023 to 17th July 2023), and that they were all accessible thereafter. Moreover, the blocking of YouTube is further suggested by Google’s Transparency Report, which shows a significant drop in YouTube traffic from Ethiopia during the same period. In response, Access Now published a statement urging authorities in Ethiopia to stop blocking access to social media.

Learn more through our research report.