Streaming services disrupted in Venezuela as Guaido speaks on Zambrano, meets oil workers

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Network data shows that Venezuela’s state-run internet provider ABA CANTV (AS8048) restricted access to YouTube, Google services, Bing and Periscope from just before 16:30 UTC (12:30 VET) until 17:40 UTC (13:40 VET) Juan Guaidó gave a press conference on situation of detained National Assembly VP Edgar Zambrano following Tuesday’s uprising. Facebook content delivery servers also subsequently became unreachable minutes into the speech.

The table shows service outages, including the temporarily restricted platforms as well as permanently restricted independent media websites, as observed from 500 accessibility and latency network tests taken from 30 vantage points across Venezuela.

Oil industry worker meeting targeted

Not long after connectivity was restored, a second disruption was implemented at 6:55 p.m. UTC (2:55 p.m. VET) as a meeting of oil industry workers and PDVSA union members with Guaido was live-streamed:

CANTV subscribers had a two-minute opportunity to update their YouTube feeds, as restrictions were briefly lifted between as the oil workers’ meeting ended before a Lima Group press conference, also targeted by state censors, started in Peru:

Access to the services was finally restored after the conclusion of the Lima Group press conference at 9:12 p.m UTC (5:12 p.m. VET).

On 30 April, multiple services were restricted for much of the day after Juan Guaidó garnered a degree of military backing and called the public out onto to the streets for “Operation Freedom”, a project with the stated goal of reinstating democratic establishments in Venezuela.

Restrictions during Leopoldo Lopez address to public

Yesterday, on the afternoon of Thursday 2 May, NetBlocks data from 20 vantage points across Venezuela confirmed Google services (and briefly, Twitter and Instagram) were restricted while Guaido’s political ally Leopoldo Lopez spoke from the Spanish embassy in Caracas, as also noted by local observers:

The new disruptions show the continuation of ephemeral, or intermittent internet censorship imposed by the state appearing to target critical speech. Data are consistent with previous targeted disruptions during public appearances by Juan Guaidó, and during sessions of Venezuela’s National Assembly. Connectivity returns when adversary Nicolás Maduro and his officials address the population.

Venezuela saw a remission in ephemeral network filtering during the nationwide power outages through March. News media and campaign website filters remained in place throughout that period and intermittent censorship resumed even as much of the country remained offline due to chronic power grid failures.

Past incidents of network filtering in Venezuela have lasted from twelve minutes to over twenty hours, when YouTube was restricted hours before the country’s first nationwide power outage. Network data indicates that the platform disruptions are consistent with methods used to block online content in Venezuela.

Methodology

Internet performance and service reachability are determined via NetBlocks web probe privacy-preserving analytics. Each measurement consists of latency round trip time, outage type and autonomous system number aggregated in real-time to assess service availability and latency in a given country. Network providers and locations are enumerated as vantage point pairs. The root cause of a service outage may be additionally corroborated by means of traffic analysis and manual testing as detailed in the report.

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