Modern Internet Censorship




Internet censorship refers to the restriction of content in the virtual world. Internet censorship is most often enacted by a government, although internet service providers, technology firms, and smaller organizations (for example, a school) also enact censorship from time to time. Most often, if an internet service provider or technology company imparts censorship on a large scale they are doing so at the request of a government, or in accordance with a law or regulation [passed by the government]. Like censorship in general, internet censorship is intended to restrict what content or information is available online. It is the concept of limiting the flow of information in order to better protect the population or, in most cases, to protect the country’s interests.


How does it work?


A common method of internet censorship is the blocking of IP addresses, the code of numbers that tell your computer where to actually go when you type in a domain name. Certain IP addresses can be blocked on an ad-hoc basis, or through the region, typically referred to as geo-location or geo-blocking.


Who is the target?


In a word, anyone. If imparted by a government, censorship is targeted at all citizens. Most often the largest targets of censorship are journalists, protestors, civil rights advocates, lawyers, or those with a dissenting view in opposition to the ruling party.


According to Freedom House’s 2021 assessment of Freedom on the Net, internet freedom has declined for the 11th straight year. 


This decline has been largely driven by governments’ abuse of problematic regulations that allow them to remove critical or unflattering content. This is expected from authoritarian countries like China, Iran, and Myanmar (which occupy the bottom three rankings in the FOTN report), but this type of online censorship is also becoming more common in democracies like India and Indonesia. 




The organization ranks each country by internet freedom: 0 is the best, 100 is the worst. 


According to the 2021 FOTN report, the four countries with the highest freedom scores are:


  • Iceland
  • Estonia
  • Canada
  • Costa Rica

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