Information Policy

Report Highlights Belarus's 'Repressive' Campaign Against Internet Freedom

Human rights watchdog Freedom House says global Internet freedom has declined dramatically in Belarus, where last year’s disputed presidential election led the authorities to repeatedly restrict access to the Internet, increase social media surveillance, and detain and use "deadly force” against online activists.

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According to the report Freedom on the Net 2021, published by Washington-based Freedom House on September 21, the "repressive campaign" by authorities against Internet liberty continued into this year, leading to a seven-point decline in the country's Internet freedom -- a drop surpassed only by Burma. Mass protests broke out across Belarus against alleged election fraud after the official results of a August 2020 vote handed authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka a sixth term in office. The protest movement was met with a brutal crackdown on demonstrators and the opposition from Lukashenka’s government, with hundreds of people being prosecuted and jailed. The opposition and the West have refused to recognize the results and called for a new, independently monitored vote. Lukashenka's postelection crackdown included the closure of the offices and blocking of the websites of TUT.by and Nasha Niva, two popular independent media outlets in the country, and the forced diversion in May of a Ryanair flight to Minsk to arrest opposition blogger Raman Pratasevich, the former editor in chief of the popular NEXTA channel on the Telegram messaging platform. Freedom on the Net is an annual report of human rights in the digital sphere. This year’s report assesses Internet access developments in 70 countries during the period spanning from June 2020 to May 2021. Overall, the report says global Internet freedom declined for the 11th consecutive year, with the greatest deterioration being documented in Burma, followed by Belarus and Uganda. 'Draconian Prison Terms' China ranked as the worst environment for Internet freedom for the seventh year in a row, with the authorities imposing "draconian prison terms for online dissent, independent reporting, and mundane daily communications." In the United States, "false, misleading, and manipulated information continued to proliferate online, affecting public acceptance of the 2020 presidential election results." That led to the country’s score declining for the fifth consecutive year. Officials in at least 48 countries have pursued new rules for tech companies on content, data, and competition to "subdue free expression and gain greater access to private data," according to Freedom House. Authorities suspended Internet access in at least 20 countries, and 21 states blocked access to social media platforms, while authorities in at least 45 countries are "suspected of obtaining sophisticated spyware or data-extraction technology from private vendors." Along with Belarus, Freedom House defines Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and Iran as being "not free" countries regarding their level of the Internet freedom. Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan are described as "partly free," while Georgia, Armenia, Serbia, and Hungary are deemed to be "free." 'Labyrinth Of Regulations' In Russia, Freedom House says the government "added to the labyrinth of regulations that international tech companies must navigate in the country." It cited a January law introducing new fines for websites and platforms that fail to remove content the state deems "illegal," while legislation in February reinforced platforms' obligations to identify and remove banned content and required them to coordinate with the federal regulator regarding content moderation decisions. Iran was among governments that imposed "especially egregious sentences" against people arrested or convicted for their online speech. Ruhollah Zam, the manager of the popular Telegram channel Amadnews, was executed in December 2020 after he was accused of inciting violence during Iran's 2017 protests. Ruhollah Zam at his trial in Tehran earlier this year. SEE ALSO: 'Unjust And Barbaric': Execution Of Iranian Dissident Sparks International Outrage Internet users faced physical attacks in retribution for their online activities in dozens of countries, including in Azerbaijan, where one of them was beaten and forced to apologize by local police in January for Facebook posts in which he criticized local government officials. Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/freedom-house-internet-freedom-belarus/31472660.html

Google Employees Reportedly Furious Company Removed Russian Voting App Amid Legal Threat

Google employees are reportedly furious over the company's decision to remove a Russian voting app ahead of elections amid a legal threat from the country's government.

We Can No Longer Expect Google and Apple to Fight for Internet Freedom

Since the backlash over Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election, global tech giants have become replaceable parts of national infrastructure.

The news of Google and Apple finally succumbing to Kremlin pressure and taking down Navalny’s app caused confusion and understandable anger among Russian liberals. But it was hardly surprising.

The idea that there is a substantial, almost ideological difference between the way tech and internet giants do business and, say, energy companies like BP or Shell, is based on the idea that tech giants’ business models are based on winning and maintaining the trust of their customers. The assumption is that while BP users have a choice — there is a competition between gas stations after all — they don’t much care which gas station they drop by to fill their car. 

Gas stations are part of the infrastructure we are used to seeing around us, and only hard-core activists might believe that boycotting global corporations like BP, which are part of that infrastructure, could prompt change. Activists never get enough people to sign on for such initiatives, and that makes all the difference.

For decades, the Internet giants existed believing public trust was an integral part of their business model. That all ended in 2016. The backlash that followed the Russian interference in the presidential election in the United States, primarily targeting Facebook, was massive, unprecedented and never actually stopped

The non-stop Congress hearings, scandals, whistleblowers coming out with the most damaging accusations about manipulation of users’ data, promoting hatred and divide, even helping hostile states and malicious populists with horrible agenda, all of that would have killed the company if Facebook’s business model still involved public trust.

Zuckerberg’s creation would have been dead by now after hemorrhaging its users. But that never happened. 

Facebook’s monthly users have been on the rise since 2016 — reaching 1.86 billion in the fourth quarter of 2016, and 2.89 billion in the second quarter of 2021. New platforms like Parlio and Quora have seen some success and popularity, but never became popular alternatives to Facebook.

That taught tech giants and governments an important lesson.

Companies learned that they should care much more about governments than the public, just like BP and the like. And indeed, ever since 2016 we’ve seen governments increasing pressure for more regulation of the global Internet giants. This has been happening everywhere — in the U.S., but also in Europe, and of course in countries with authoritarian regimes like Russia.

Governments realised that the public is incapable of protecting tech giants. You might have billions of users, but if the local government decides to attack your company very few of them will do anything about it. The days of protesters in Moscow waving Facebook flags in front of the Presidential Administration building on Staraya Ploshchad are long gone.  

What is also gone, thanks to the post-2016 backlash in the West, is the idea that in countries with repressive regimes tech giants can be a force for good when it comes to Internet freedom. In Western society the thought that global platforms might still present an opportunity, not just a threat, seems very bizarre these days. Nobody expects huge popular outcry abroad about a decision that affects Russian users.

Replaceable platforms

In countries like Russia, global tech companies could have believed they had become part of the national infrastructure, thereby gaining protection from outright blocking, but the way Internet usage changed over the past five to seven years ruined these hopes. 

These days, we use our social media on our smartphones, not laptops. The problem with mobile Internet is that the ordinary user doesn’t visit YouTube’s homepage to check on the latest hot videos, they are bombarded by links sent by friends via WhatsApp or Telegram, and nobody cares anymore whether the source was YouTube, TikTok or RuTube, the much promoted Russian analogue of YouTube. The Internet has become part of the national infrastructure, but global platforms are replaceable.

The tragedy of Google and Apple and Twitter is that this dramatic change in public and government perception happened so quickly that the companies are still run by the people who launched them. We expect them to keep fighting for privacy, integrity, and the Internet freedoms which made their business possible in the first place.

In the book “The Red Web,” Valery Bardin, one of the Soviet Union’s internet pioneers, who was in charge of maintaining the first Soviet Internet network, Relcom, explained why he decided to keep the line open during the 1991 August coup, despite personal risks. 

“We were already on the losing side, just because information exchange is what Relcom was all about. We would be the enemies of the regime anyway, no matter what we did.”

But today, exactly 30 years later, the Internet is more, and less, than it was in 1991 — it is part of the country’s infrastructure. 

We don't expect gas stations to go on strike, do we?

Andrei Soldatov

Andrei Soldatovm/a> is a Russian investigative journalist and an expert of the Russian internet. He is the co-author of "The Compatriots: The Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Émigrés, and Agents Abroad." Soldatov is a CEPA senior fellow.  @AndreiSoldatov

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