“This video is unavailable to watch in your region.”
A video you comfortably watched in 2010 on X (formerly Twitter) now displays this error message. Then you wonder: what changed? The borderless internet we grew up with is dying.
As several governments scramble to control the flow of information in their media, that scrutiny has also fallen on the internet. The global digital village is fracturing into competitive sovereign states — a phenomenon known as the “Splinternet” or internet fragmentation.
The fragmentation of digital infrastructure spans from data localisation laws — such as Russia, China, India, and the EU requiring tech giants to store users’ data locally — to “National DNS” systems and “kill switches”. Iran and Russia, for instance, have successfully tested cutting off and isolating their respective domestic networks from the global DNS during crises.
China took its internet sovereignty a step further through the use of censorship firewalls, most notably China’s Great Firewall. Other nations have taken the route of content takedown laws, with India enforcing its IT Rules, the EU introducing the Digital Services Act, and Germany enacting NetzDG.
For people living in such a bordered internet, governments have built digital echo chambers. China relies on WeChat and Baidu, whilst Russia pushes VK and Yandex. The severe impacts of these borders manifest in a loss of economic opportunities, silenced dissent, and a steady diet of state-vetted propaganda.
Licensing and copyright restrictions also play a role in the Splinternet; when content rights are purchased strictly by region, users in numerous other countries are excluded from accessing it.
Despite all this fragmentation, the Splinternet is not airtight — it operates more like a sieve. What leaks through occurs via the use of VPNs and proxies, allowing people to access banned content until certain governments criminalise these tools. Furthermore, because there is no single central server for the entire internet, complete blockades remain difficult to achieve.
The pushback against these digital borders can also be seen through meme culture and code: a TikTok dance or a programming library can cross borders even when news cannot. Within diaspora communities, people carry information physically — a video banned in Country A is frequently forwarded via WhatsApp by someone in Country B.
The open internet might ultimately be seen as a historical accident. It worked because no single entity owned it.
Digital borders work because everyone now wants to own a piece of it. With control of the web entangled with power, money, and politics, the open internet risks becoming a mere memory. The biggest losers will not be the superpowers building walls — it will be ordinary people who lose the ability to speak to one another across them.