The State of Internet Freedom Around the World

Global access to the internet has jumped by leaps and bounds in the past decade, but how free and open the web is varies significantly from country to country.

A study from nonprofit organization Freedom House on the Rise of Digital Authoritarianism analyzed internet freedom in 65 countries around the globe from June 2017 to May 2018. Of the countries assessed, Freedom House found that 26 have seen an overall decline in internet freedom since June 2017, compared with 19 that registered net improvements.  

The in-depth study found that China, with its Great Firewall, remains the worst abuser of internet freedom through censorship and surveillance. Specifically, the country's new Cybersecurity Law centralized all internet policy within the Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) in 2018. It aims to stop transmission of banned content, to host all Chinese data within the country, to crack down on VPNs, and to continue to release more granular directives policing digital life.

The biggest declines in internet freedom occurred in Egypt, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Kenya, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Venezuela. Half of those declines—which coincided with rises in disinformation—occurred following elections of more authoritarian leaders.

Other countries in which internet freedom remains poor amid widespread censorship and clampdowns on free speech include Cuba, Iran, and Russia. The latter has increased data sovereignty and is actively working to create a government-controlled web that is completely disconnected from the rest of the internet.

This global decline in internet freedom has occurred even as more of the planet becomes connected. According to estimates from the International Telecommunications Union, global internet penetration has increased by leaps and bounds from 2009 to 2018. This includes a 23.5 percent jump across the Americas, 28.1 percent in Asia Pacific countries, a 33.3 percent increase in the Middle East, and a whopping 47 percent increase among former Soviet Union countries in Eastern Europe and North Asia, including Russia.

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On the freer end of the spectrum, countries including Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Mexico are considered partly free. Democracies including the United States, Canada, Australia, Japan, and most western European countries remain among the most free.

But Freedom House found that overall, internet freedom has declined in the US, specifically because of the repeal of net neutrality protections and the reauthorization of the FISA Amendments Act: It gives the government more leeway to conduct broad surveillance operations of non-US targets that sweep up citizens' personal communications in the process.