Top 10 countries around the world with increased Internet censorship

Internet freedom is known for being severely restricted in China and Russia, such as the sudden deletion of popular censorship evasion apps or the government conducting tests to prevent domestic networks from connecting to the Internet. However, as a result of an investigation using a tool independently developed by a research team at the University of Michigan in the United States, it turned out that censorship is spreading even in countries that have been known to be free.

According to a report released in October 2020 by Freedom House, an international NGO on democracy and human rights, Internet freedom is on the decline worldwide. Freedom House cited the strengthening of regulations according to the epidemic as the cause of the global increase in censorship.

Following this research, the University of Michigan research team conducted a study to analyze the increase or decrease of censorship from 2018 to 2020 through Sensored Planet, a self-developed censorship tracking system. As a result, it was discovered that censorship was on the rise in 103 of the 221 countries targeted by Sensored Planet. Among the countries with increased censorship were Norway, Japan, Italy, India, Israel and Poland, as well as regions designated as countries with high degrees of freedom in the Freedom House survey.

According to the interactive map of the survey results of the Sensored Planet, Portugal is definitely the number one censorship growth rate. Portugal has established itself as a group with a fairly high degree of freedom from 100 to 96 in the Freedom House evaluation. The second place is St. Kitts and Nevis, which is located in the Caribbean Sea, with 89 points for Freedom House and 97 points for the Freedom House evaluation, ranking 8th in the world rankings. It is one of the highest countries.

In addition to the top 10 growth rate countries, Iceland in 4th place (94 Freedom House score), New Zealand in 5th place (97 points), Latvia in 6th place (89 points), Brazil in 7th place (75 points), Estonia in 8th place (94 points). Croatia at 9th place (85 points) and Bulgaria at 10th place (80 points). Meanwhile, Korea ranked 29th in the growth rate, 83 points for Freedom House, and 37th (86 points) in the United States.

It can be said that the results of the Sensored Planet survey show that no country is completely free. Many countries have laws that block bad objects such as illegal content by Internet service providers, but once the foundation for blocking something is established, the government can block any website and the process can be quite unclear. . Related information can be found here .