In an effort to quell a historic show of popular dissent against Cuba’s communist dictatorship, the Cuban government throttled internet access across the country on Sunday and Monday.

Cuban internet users began suffering outages late Sunday afternoon, shortly after thousands of Cubans took to the streets to protest the government’s mismanagement of the COVID-19 pandemic and an intensifying food shortage. Internet users experienced two “brief total blackouts” and “erratic” coverage for the remainder of the day, according to the network monitoring company Kentik.

On Monday, the internet monitor NetBlocks reported that Cuba’s state-owned telecommunications provider, ETECSA, had begun implementing targeted restrictions against popular social media platforms, including Telegram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram, YouTube and Facebook. VPN services remain effective at circumventing the restrictions, according to NeBtlocks....