The Freedom on the Net report has revealed that global internet freedom has decreased for the 14th consecutive year. Myanmar and China were rated as having the worst internet freedom records, while Kyrgyzstan experienced the sharpest decline in 2024 due to President Sadyr Japarov’s crackdown on online organizing and digital media. The government in Kyrgyzstan shut down the investigative media website Kloop, which had reported on allegations of torture in custody made by an opposition leader. Overall, human rights protections online decreased in 27 out of 72 countries covered in the report.
Myanmar joined China in having a low internet freedom score, with the military government imposing censorship and surveillance on online speech. The government in Myanmar implemented measures to block access to virtual private networks (VPNs) in an effort to restrict internet controls. China’s internet freedom score remains low due to its “great firewall,” which isolates the country from the rest of the world and blocks content that challenges the ruling Communist Party. The Chinese government dismissed the report, stating that its citizens enjoy rights and freedoms in accordance with the law.
Several other countries were downgraded in the report, including Azerbaijan, which imprisoned people for social media posts, and Iraq, where a prominent activist was killed after a Facebook post led to protests. On the other hand, Iceland was identified as having the freest online environment globally, followed by Estonia, Canada, Chile, and Costa Rica. Zambia saw the largest improvement in its score, illustrating a growing space for online activism in the country. The report also assessed the conditions in Chile and the Netherlands for the first time, noting strong safeguards for human rights online.
In terms of the United States, the report raised concerns about the lack of safeguards against government surveillance and ranked the country 76 out of 100 in terms of the protection of human rights online. The report specifically highlighted actions by 19 US states against the use of artificial intelligence in election campaigns. As several elections, including the US presidential election, were scheduled in the last three months of the year, the internet played a significant role in shaping the electoral process. Technical censorship limited opposition parties’ ability to reach supporters and restricted access to independent reporting about the election process, affecting more than a billion voters worldwide.
