Ten Years of #KeepItOn: What the Campaign Has Achieved

In 2026, Access Now's #KeepItOn coalition reaches a milestone few digital rights campaigns manage to hit: a full decade of continuous operation. Founded in 2016, the coalition set out with a deceptively simple goal captured in its name: keep the internet on. Ten years later, that mission has grown into a global network of organizations documenting, challenging, and pushing back against government-ordered internet shutdowns wherever they occur.

The anniversary is being marked as both a celebration and a sober reflection. Access Now's own framing of the milestone leans heavily on the phrase "the journey still to come," a reminder that a decade of advocacy has not eliminated the practice it was built to fight. Internet shutdowns, whether total blackouts or more targeted throttling of specific platforms, remain a tool that governments reach for during elections, protests, exams, and periods of civil unrest. The #KeepItOn coalition's core work, tracking these incidents and applying diplomatic and public pressure, has not become obsolete. If anything, the need for it has intensified as more governments adopt shutdowns as a default response to political friction.

How Government Shutdowns Have Evolved Since 2016

When the #KeepItOn campaign launched, internet shutdowns were often blunt instruments: a country would go dark for days at a time, and the international response would follow after the fact. A decade on, the picture is more complicated. Shutdowns have become more targeted, more frequent, and in some cases more difficult to detect in real time, as governments learn to throttle specific apps or regions rather than cutting off entire national networks.

This evolution matters because it changes what "fighting a shutdown" looks like in practice. Coalition monitoring described in 2025 was the worst year for internet freedom shows that the trend line has not been improving. According to that reporting, the #KeepItOn coalition documented internet freedom conditions worsening to record lows, underscoring that a decade of advocacy has coincided with an increase, not a decrease, in the frequency of disruptions. Governments have also become more sophisticated about timing shutdowns around sensitive political moments, particularly elections, when the stakes for information access are highest and international attention is most likely to focus.

A clear example of this pattern in action is the coalition's response detailed in KeepItOn coalition presses Zambia on election internet access, where more than 370 organizations across 106 countries jointly appealed to Zambia's president ahead of an election, urging that connectivity be maintained. That kind of coordinated, cross-border pressure campaign is exactly the model #KeepItOn has refined over ten years: rapid documentation, broad coalition-building, and direct appeals to decision-makers before a shutdown can take hold.

Why VPN Demand Spikes During Blackouts, and Where VPNs Fall Short

For ordinary users caught in the middle of a shutdown, VPNs are frequently the first line of defense people reach for, and download spikes for VPN apps are a near-universal signal that a country is experiencing restricted access. VPNs can be genuinely effective against certain kinds of restrictions, particularly when specific websites or apps are blocked while the broader internet remains accessible. Routing traffic through a VPN server outside the restricted network can restore access to blocked platforms in these scenarios.

But VPNs have real limits, and it's important for readers to understand them rather than treat a VPN as a universal fix. When a government shuts down mobile data or fixed-line internet entirely, at the infrastructure level rather than the application level, no VPN can restore a connection that simply does not exist. VPNs also cannot help if a government blocks VPN traffic itself, something increasingly sophisticated network operators have learned to detect and throttle. And in fast-moving political crises, installing a VPN app after a shutdown has already begun is far less useful than having one already installed and configured beforehand.

This is precisely why organizations like #KeepItOn have spent a decade building advocacy infrastructure rather than relying solely on individual workarounds. VPNs remain a useful tool for at-risk users, journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens navigating targeted censorship, but they work best as one layer of preparedness rather than a complete solution to a full network blackout.

What the Next Decade of Shutdown Resistance Looks Like

Access Now's own framing of the KeepItOn internet shutdowns anniversary makes clear that the coalition views this as unfinished work. The next decade is likely to involve continued monitoring, more coalition-building around specific flashpoints like elections, and ongoing pressure on governments and telecommunications regulators to treat connectivity as a right rather than a switch to be flipped during moments of political inconvenience.

What This Means For You

If you live in or travel to a region with a history of election-related or protest-related shutdowns, it's worth installing and testing a VPN before you need it, not during a crisis. Understand that a VPN helps most against selective blocking, not full network outages, and that having offline backup plans, such as knowing how to reach family or colleagues without internet access, matters just as much as any app.

Key Takeaways

A decade of #KeepItOn advocacy has documented internet shutdowns rather than ended them, and the practice remains common around elections and periods of unrest. Readers in at-risk regions should prepare VPN access in advance rather than waiting for a blackout, understand the technical limits of VPNs against full network shutdowns, and follow coalition efforts, including the pressure campaigns around events like Zambia's election, to understand how these disruptions unfold and get challenged in real time.