New Report Catalogues “Unprecedented” Government Monitoring of Citizens Online

“The US bears a special responsibility for addressing these threats to internet freedom.”

AJ Vicens

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ultura via ZUMA Press

The “unregulated spaces of social media platforms” are increasingly serving as “instruments for political distortion,” according to a new analysis from the democracy watchdog Freedom House, leading the group to conclude for the ninth consecutive year that global internet and digital media freedom has declined.
The Washington, DC-based free expression and research nonprofit has been studying internet freedom since 2009. This year’s report surveyed 65 countries covering the vast majority of the world’s internet users, seeking to measure factors including legal safeguards for free expression, the protection of internet users’ rights to privacy, and the ability to transmit news and political information.

Internet-based disinformation efforts “have reached a new zenith and sophistication.”

Mike Abramowitz, the president of Freedom House, told reporters that this year’s report found two key themes: government and populist movements using social media platforms to “manipulate elections on a grand scale, alongside government use of “technology to monitor their own citizens on an unprecedented scale.”

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