FREEDOM ON THE NET 2024 The Struggle for Trust Online Freedom on the Net 2024: The Struggle for Trust Online By Allie Funk, Kian Vesteinsson, and Grant Baker A rapid series of consequential elections have reshaped the global information environment over the past year. Technical censorship curbed many opposition parties’ ability to reach supporters and suppressed access to independent reporting about the electoral process. False claims of voter fraud and a rise in harassment of election administrators threatened public confidence in the integrity of balloting procedures. Partisan efforts to delegitimize independent factcheckers and researchers chilled their essential work. As a result, more than a billion voters had to make major decisions about their future while navigating a censored, distorted, and unreliable information space. censorship technology to block most VPNs, cutting residents off from tools they had relied on to safely and securely bypass internet controls. At the same time, Beijing has persisted in its effort to isolate China’s domestic internet from the rest of the world, blocking international traffic to some government websites and imposing huge fines on people using VPNs. The Chinese government also continued to systematically repress dissent, for example by censoring online discussion about activist and journalist Sun Lin, who died in November 2023 after police beat him in apparent retaliation for his social media posts about protests against Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping. These trends contributed to the 14th consecutive year of decline in global internet freedom. Of the 72 countries covered by Freedom on the Net 2024, conditions for human rights online deteriorated in 27, and 18 countries registered overall gains. The year’s largest decline occurred in Kyrgyzstan, followed by Azerbaijan, Belarus, Iraq, and Zimbabwe. Conversely, Zambia earned the largest improvement, as space for online activism opened. In more than three-fourths of the countries covered by the project, people faced arrest for expressing their political, social, and religious views online, while people were met with physical violence related to their online activities in a record high of at least 43 countries. Well beyond the world’s worst environments, many people faced harsh repercussions for expressing themselves online. GLOBAL INTERNET POPULATION BY 2024 FOTN STATUS Freedom on the Net assesses 86.7 percent of the world’s internet user population. NOT ASSESSED 13% Wiping out online dissent For the first time in 10 years, China shared its designation as the world’s worst environment for internet freedom with a second country: Myanmar. Conditions there deteriorated to their lowest point in the history of FOTN. Since seizing power in a 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military has conducted a brutally violent crackdown on dissent and imprisoned thousands of people in retaliation for their online speech, all while building a mass censorship and surveillance regime to suppress the activities of civilian prodemocracy activists and armed resistance groups. In May 2024, the military introduced new 2 @freedomonthenet NOT FREE 35% FREE 17% PARTLY FREE 35% #FreedomOnTheNet