Circumvention activity varied strongly by geographic proximity to the crisis: Hubei province, the epicenter, saw Twitter volume double relative to pre-lockdown baseline and sustain that doubling 30 days after the crisis, while mobility decreases from Baidu location data correlated with Twitter user increases across provinces — but two weeks after lockdown, the elevated Twitter usage could no longer be explained by mobility restrictions or New Year seasonality, indicating crisis-induced circumvention becomes self-sustaining.
From 2022-chang-covid-19 — COVID-19 increased censorship circumvention and access to sensitive topics in China
· Increases in Circumvention Occurred throughout China / Fig. 4
· 2022
· PNAS
Implications
Deploy additional proxy capacity regionally near crisis epicenters — geographically targeted demand spikes can double usage in affected areas while other regions see smaller increases, making regional load balancing more effective than uniform scaling.
Circumvention habits formed during crises persist even after the precipitating event ends; this argues for long-lived proxy infrastructure rather than ephemeral surge capacity that is decommissioned post-crisis.