Web blocking: Soon after the protests began, Tunisia ramped up its attempts at controlling the internet. These started simply enough, with straight-up site blocking. In an open letter to the Tunisian government, the Committee to Protect Journalists outlined the online repression:

We are troubled to learn that your government’s practice of blocking websites — including CPJ Web pages on Tunisia — has recently intensified. Local journalists told CPJ that additional news websites, as well as numerous Facebook pages carrying critical content, blogs, and journalists’ e-mail accounts have been blocked by the state-run Tunisian Internet Agency since protests erupted on December 17. Regional and international media have reported that numerous local and international news websites covering the street protests were blocked in Tunisia. One report placed your country, along with Saudi Arabia, as the worst in the region regarding Internet censorship. A 2009 CPJ study found Tunisia to be one of the 10 worst countries worldwide to be a blogger, in part for the same reasons.