Messages in the Blackout
When governments shut down the internet, they are not just cutting access to information. They are cutting visibility.
In Iran, large-scale internet shutdowns have become a familiar response to protest. Most people lose the ability to send messages, upload videos, or even check the news. From the outside, the country appears to go quiet. But silence is misleading.
A small number of Iranians continue to send images and messages to the outside world. They do it using a fragile mix of tools: satellite connections, proxy networks, encrypted messaging apps. These connections are unstable, and dangerous. Using them can carry severe legal and life threatening consequences.
The result is a trickle of evidence: a short video, a photo from a funeral, a voice message sent before the signal drops. These fragments matter because they interrupt total erasure. They prevent violence from becoming invisible.
Even doctors, firefighters, and everyday people use these signals to help their neighbors in extreme danger.
Internet shutdowns work in part because of how attention functions. When information stops flowing, outrage fades quickly. Without images or stories, suffering becomes abstract. People outside the country move on. The blackout doesn’t need to last forever to be effective. It only needs to last long enough for attention to shift elsewhere.
For those who keep transmitting, the cost is high. Signals can be traced. Equipment can be confiscated. Neighbourhoods can be targeted. Staying connected often means moving devices, limiting use, and trusting very few people.
Iranian diaspora communities and non-Iranians alike are also using social media to share concerns about the blackout and about what may be happening inside Iran.
These messages do not tell the full story of what is happening inside Iran. They cannot. They come from a tiny fraction of the population. But they serve a different purpose. They remind the world that something is still happening, even when it is hard to see.