Internet freedoms are in decline, report
The Balkanisation of the web is picking up pace along with state surveillance, finds report by Freedom House
The latest annual Freedom on the Net report by US-based research institute Freedom House tracks the depressing decline of online freedoms around the world.
For the twelfth year straight, there has been a net decrease in internet freedom, defined according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as the right "to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers".
Internet freedoms have declined most severely in Russia, which long before its invasion of Ukraine was seeking to seal itself off from the web, but since then the Kremlin has dramatically intensified its efforts to suppress dissent and control the flow of information.
Myanmar, Sudan and Libya are also highlighted in the report. Myanmar's government was ousted by a military coup in 2021 and is now the second most unfree country for internet users. The coup in Sudan and ongoing chaos in Libya have also been used by authorities to crack down on their populations, with people imprisoned or 'disappeared' for sharing information online. But China was the world's worst environment for internet freedom for the eighth consecutive year.
"In China, the government has been fairly successful in pairing systematic censorship of foreign services with robust investment in domestic platforms that are beholden to the ruling party," the report notes.
China's attempts to restrict citizens access to the global internet are almost as old as the web itself, with efforts to create the 'great firewall' dating back to 1997. While citizens were able to bypass restrictions using VPNs, distributing such software is illegal and subject to severe punishment, and increasingly online life, including communications, services and payments, is mediated through super-apps like WeChat which are under direct control of the authorities.
"The main internet regulator issued guidance requiring platforms to align their content moderation and recommendation systems with 'Xi Jinping Thought' — the official ideology of the current CCP leader," says Freedom House.
Other low spots include India's new requirements for VPN providers to maintain logs on users for five years; Singapore's ruling that sites should remove content if they suspect it "was influenced by a foreign actor"; Rwanda joining a lengthening list of nations that require companies to store data in-country; Cambodia's plans to route all international and domestic internet traffic through a single portal; and the UEA's exemption of government entities from its data protection laws.
In all, governments in 47 of the 70 countries covered by the report have limited users' access to information sources located outside their borders. Frequently, national security is invoked as the reason for these crackdowns, the report says.
"Disproportionate surveillance remains one of the most obvious problems affecting democracies' internet freedom performance. Too often, rights considerations are disregarded in favour of the misguided belief that more intrusive tools and greater state access to data will necessarily contribute to a safer society."
However, it's not all doom and gloom. In 26 out of the 70 countries studied, internet freedoms have improved, thanks to efforts to improve legislation, develop media resilience, and ensure more accountability among technology companies.
Iceland came out top for internet freedoms (.xlsx), as it did last year, followed by Estonia, Canada and Costa Rica, with the UK in fifth place. Legislation protecting online rights and victories by campaigners for digital freedoms were also recorded in countries including Mexico, Gambia, Zambia and Armenia.
Democratic leaders should recommit to preserving the benefits of a free and open internet, say the report's authors.
"True resilience requires new regulations that enshrine protections for human rights in the digital age, stronger multilateral coordination on cybercrime and corporate accountability, and deeper investment in civil society, which so often drives collective action to defend internet freedom and resist digital authoritarianism."
Freedom House is a non-profit organisation that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. The majority of its funding comes from the US government.