FREEDOM ON THE NET 2024 The Struggle for Trust Online comments from officials of the then-ruling Awami League about foreign pressure on the elections, progovernment Bangladeshi bloggers painted the opposition BNP as a tool of US interests. In the lead-up to the June 2024 European Parliament elections, influencers who support Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party published videos characterizing the Hungarian political opposition as the “dollar left” and independent news outlets as the “dollar media,” implying that they do the bidding of foreign donors. In some of the most repressive environments, governments have long worked to delegitimize or co-opt fact-checking. On the day of Egypt’s December 2023 presidential election, the country’s media authority launched an investigation into the fact-checking platform Saheeh Masr. The site had reported that the state-owned conglomerate United Media Services ordered affiliated outlets to suppress election reporting, including stories that showed low turnout or voters facing pressure to choose a particular candidate. In authoritarian countries, progovernment commentators mobilized to depict sham elections as free and fair. Azerbaijan’s regime enlisted content creators from around the world—compensated with free travel and accommodation in Baku—to acclaim the integrity of the February 2024 elections, which were heavily manipulated to favor incumbent president Ilham Aliyev. The efforts built on Azerbaijani officials’ long-running attempts to legitimize their rigged elections, including the funding of ersatz electionobservation missions. Democracies were not immune to this trend during the coverage period. Weeks before balloting began in India’s general elections, the central government sought to stand up a factchecking unit that would “correct” purportedly false reporting on official business. Indian journalists and civil society groups criticized the project as ripe for abuse, and the country’s highest court temporarily paused the creation of the unit. Similarly, the Washington Post reported that an Indian disinformation research hub was in fact linked to the national intelligence services, finding that it laundered talking points in support of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) alongside fact-based research. In authoritarian countries, progovernment commentators mobilized to depict sham elections as free and fair. Attempts to delegitimize fact-checkers Government actors in several countries launched direct attacks—in the form of disinformation campaigns, online harassment, or other forms of political interference—on the work of independent researchers and fact-checkers who are dedicated to unmasking influence operations and boosting trustworthy information. As a result, some initiatives were forced to shutter or reduce their operations, leaving voters in the dark about attempts to spread false information and undermining societal resilience in the face of electoral manipulation. Governments also established more friendly alternatives to independent fact-checkers, seeking to harness the trusted practice of fact-checking for their own political benefit. 12 @freedomonthenet South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol and his People Power Party employed the rhetoric of “fake news” to justify a campaign against independent media ahead of April 2024 legislative elections. Authorities raided and blacklisted independent media outlets that had reported critically on the government, and People Power Party legislators launched a campaign to tar South Korea’s primary fact-checking platform, the nonprofit SNUFactCheck, as biased. The accusations reportedly caused a major sponsor to withdraw funding from SNUFactCheck, which had operated through a partnership between Seoul National University and dozens of prominent media outlets. The funding crisis led the center to suspend activities indefinitely as of August 2024, depriving residents of a crucial service that helped them distinguish fact from fiction online. Similar pressure on independent experts in the United States has left people less informed about influence operations ahead of the November elections. A coalition of researchers known as the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP), which had conducted analysis of—and at times notified social media companies about—false electoral information during the 2020 campaign period, faced intense pressure and scrutiny. False allegations about the EIP’s work, including that it fueled government censorship, prompted a wave of litigation, subpoenas from top Republicans on the US House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee, and online harassment aimed at EIP participants. This concerning campaign has raised the cost of working on #FreedomOnTheNet