What’s the difference between Russia’s internet before and after the invasion of Ukraine? The answer: a thirtyfold increase in censorship.
Russia’s Online Censorship Has Soared 30-Fold During Ukraine War
Tag Archives: censorship
As governments across Asia fight for control over the internet and big tech, citizens on social media face rising online crackdowns
During the COVID-19 lockdowns in Vietnam last year, blogger Bui Van Thuan took to Facebook to criticise a government plan to use soldiers to deliver groceries to people confined to their homes in Ho Chi Minh City.
Inside the Face-Off Between Russia and a Small Internet Access Firm
The cat-and-mouse experience of Proton, a Swiss company, shows what it’s like to be targeted by Russian censors — and what it takes to fight back.
Iran’s sweeping internet blackouts are a serious cause for concern
When Iranian authorities pulled the plug on the internet in 2019 amid anti-government protests, the international community struggled to track the civilian carnage that followed.
‘They Are Watching’: Inside Russia’s Vast Surveillance State
A cache of nearly 160,000 files from Russia’s powerful internet regulator provides a rare glimpse inside Vladimir V. Putin’s digital crackdown.
Flicking the kill switch: governments embrace internet shutdowns as a form of control
On 1 February 2021, reporter Ko Zin Lin Htet received a panicked phone call from a source in the Burmese capital, Yangon. The caller said the military had seized power and was arresting opposition politicians, then hung up. Ko Zin Lin Htet remembered what he did next: “I checked my phone and my internet connection. There was nothing there.”
Classic Internet Censorship: New regulations in Indonesia show that strict online controls are no longer confined to autocratic countries like China.
I want us to consider the implications of this new reality: In three of the four most populous countries in the world, governments have now given themselves the power to order that the internet be wiped of citizens’ posts that the authorities don’t like.
Kremlin tightens control over Russians’ online lives – threatening domestic freedoms and the global internet
Since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine in late February 2022, Russian internet users have experienced what has been dubbed the descent of a “digital iron curtain.”
China’s Internet Censors Try a New Trick: Revealing Users’ Locations
For years China’s censors have relied on a trusted tool kit to control the country’s internet. They have deleted posts, suspended accounts, blocked keywords, and arrested the most outspoken.
Now they are trying a new trick: displaying social media users’ locations beneath posts.
As ‘Great Firewall’ looms, fears for Hong Kong’s free internet
For decades, Hong Kong’s internet operated outside the reach of China’s vast army of censors, guaranteeing the free flow of information that undergirds the city’s status as a global business hub.