Matt Perault, global head of policy at Facebook, started there in January 2011 -- around the time Egypt conducted widespread internet outages to quell protests. Over the next few years, he noticed that internet blocks were still happening with some frequency, just on a smaller scale. You can think about the internet in three different layers: There's the actual infrastructure that powers the internet -- think cables and satellites. Facebook said it is "aware of at least 48 times in 2016 when access to Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram was disrupted. "My main concern right now is moving to a world where there's increasingly sophisticated small-scale blocks," Perault said.

Source: CNN March 12, 2017 17:41 UTC