Sustained censorship in Saudi Arabia (2026-05)
Saudi Arabia · May 4, 2026 · Ongoing
OONI detected 7 days of elevated network interference averaging 24.7% anomaly rate.
Evidence
25%
Anomaly Rate
7
Measurements
70%
Confidence
What This Means
25% of tests showed anomalies, above the typical 1-3% baseline. This suggests potential network interference.
How We Detected This
Data Sourceooni
ML ModelGradientBoosting v3.3 (LOCO median F1 0.87, honest across 127 countries)
Confidence Score70% certainty of censorship
Detection TimeMay 4, 2026
Corroborating Evidence (7)
Evidence collected from multiple independent sources. Upstream claims shown in quotes are not Voidly assertions.
OONIOpen Observatory of Network Interference7 records
block
"OONI per-ASN: 308/2913 anomalous, 131 confirmed on AS25019"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.11
May 31, 2026
View source →block
"OONI per-ASN: 14/100 anomalous, 11 confirmed on AS35753"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.14
May 31, 2026
View source →block
"OONI per-ASN: 63/313 anomalous, 34 confirmed on AS35819"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.20
May 31, 2026
View source →block
"OONI per-ASN: 84/700 anomalous, 44 confirmed on AS39891"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.12
May 31, 2026
View source →block
"OONI per-ASN: 34/212 anomalous, 14 confirmed on AS43766"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.16
May 31, 2026
View source →+ 2 more OONI records
What we cannot say
- Who caused it — measurement data alone does not attribute this to any government, ISP, or other actor.
- Intent — anomalous or unreachable measurements indicate interference, not a stated motive or a deliberate-vs-incidental determination.
- Which networks — no specific ASN/ISP is identified for this incident.
- The mechanism — we cannot state whether this was DNS tampering, TLS/SNI reset, an HTTP blockpage, throttling, or an infrastructure outage.
- A confirmed duration — we report the observation window, not a verified start/stop of any block.
- Sub-national scope — measurement is aggregated at the country level; we cannot localize to a province, city, or network segment.
- Independent corroboration — this rests on a single source; treat it as a single-source signal, not a multi-source confirmation.
Cite This Incident
Voidly Research. (2026). Sustained censorship in Saudi Arabia (2026-05) [SA-2026-0156]. Voidly Global Censorship Index. https://voidly.ai/incident/SA-2026-0156
Related
Related incidents
More in Saudi Arabia
Internet connectivity disruption in Saudi Arabia
2026-06-20 · Infrastructure outage
Internet censorship detected in Saudi Arabia
2026-06-17 · DNS blocking
Internet censorship detected in Saudi Arabia
2026-06-14 · DNS blocking
Internet censorship detected in Saudi Arabia
2026-06-10 · DNS blocking
Internet censorship detected in Saudi Arabia
2026-06-07 · DNS blocking
Sustained censorship in SA (2026-06)
2026-06-03 · Tor blocking