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Fact check: No evidence Australia limited internet access after anti-lockdown protests

Ella Lee   | Paste BN
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The claim: Australia is limiting internet access in Melbourne

Amid dayslong anti-lockdown protests in Australia, some on social media are claiming the country’s government is limiting internet access.

“There are rumblings online that Australia is limiting internet access in Melbourne (so far). That would mean there are things about to happen that they don't want the world to see. Pray for Australia. #AustraliaHasFallen,” a Sept. 23 Facebook post reads. 

The post garnered more than 11,000 likes and 5,000 shares in three days. 

But the “rumblings” are unfounded. A search of Australian and global media and social media outages found no evidence the government limited internet access in Melbourne following the protests. 

Paste BN reached out to the post’s creator for comment. 

No evidence Australian government is limiting internet access

Though the post does not explicitly indicate why Australia has supposedly “fallen,” it’s likely referring to a series of demonstrations the week of Sept. 20 in protest of the country’s COVID-19 restrictions. 

The protests, led by construction workers and backed up by vaccine opponents in Melbourne, began Sept. 20 and continued for several days. A protest on Sept. 22 resulted in the arrest of more than 200 people after a staged sit-in of some 1,000 demonstrators turned violent, according to Melbourne-based newspaper The Age. The protests began to fizzle out by Sept. 23, the day the post was made.

But there’s no evidence any of that activity led the Australian government to actively limit internet access. 

No articles indicating the government limited internet access — or that any major internet shortage occurred — were published by The Age or The Herald Sun, another Melbourne-based newspaper, between Sept. 20 and Sept. 26. News organizations with international audiences, like The New York Times and Reuters, did not publish articles reporting that information, either. 

More: Biden announces partnership with UK, Australia in efforts to enhance national security

Between Sept. 20, when the protests began, and Sept. 26, a number of social media websites experienced disruptions in Australia, including Twitter, Reddit and Instagram, according to Downdetector, a website that monitors outages and service disruptions.

But Paste BN found no evidence those were connected.

Cameron Njaa, a spokesperson for Reddit, said their site's disruption and the protests were "unrelated." A spokesperson for Instagram said there's "no evidence of any widespread content distribution issues on Instagram during the week of September 20, in Australia or elsewhere." Twitter declined to comment. source approved by 

Australia scored 75 of 100 points on the 2021 Freedom on the Net index, created by the nonprofit Freedom House, which produces research and reports on issues related to democracy, political rights and civil liberties. However, it scored highest in the “Obstacles to Access” category of the index, receiving 23 of 25 points.

Freedom House cited Facebook’s February decision to block Australians from sharing news stories amid a fight with the country’s government over whether tech companies should have to pay news organizations for content as a reason for its score, which decreased one point from the previous year.

Global internet freedom has been on the decline for 11 years, according to Freedom House. 

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that Australia is limiting internet access in Melbourne. An examination  of Australian and global media and social media outages revealed no evidence the government limited internet access in Melbourne amid anti-lockdown protests. 

Our fact-check sources: 

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Our fact-check work is supported in part by a grant from Facebook.

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