I’m generally sceptical of attempts to quantify concepts like ‘internet freedom’.⁰
However, the conclusion is probably right, insofar as it’s meaningful to refer to internet freedom ‘around the world’, even going on a qualitative approach.
The long-term trend is the spread of China-style internet controls at the very least in non-democracies.¹ There is not much stopping this process except bureaucratic inertia. It is in the interests of the zhongnanhai not to have to interact with a world set on democratic norms contrary to its interests. It is in the interests of local governments to be able to control the threat of dissent on the internet. Although there are some unsung victories (e.g. in Malawi, Zambia, and maybe Sudan) in which incumbents were thrown out at least partly by movements in support of constitutional democracy, just as many countries are slipping away from constitutional democracy, so the pool of dictatorships open to Chinese-style internet controls is at the very least not shrinking very fast.
In the West, it’s very hard to find principled defenders of freedom of expression in any political party, and the same applies to internet freedom. If the legal situation is right, judges are more attached to it.
One way I've imagined that "internet freedom" could be measured objectively (if not necessarily accurately) is simply to measure what percentage of the web is available in each country.
The word "simply" perhaps doesn't belong in that sentence, but let's assume for a moment that 1) it is possible to enumerate every possible website, without duplication, 2) it is possible to say definitively whether a given site is accessible in a given country, and 3) that sites which apply their own geoblocks count as "available" everywhere (to avoid having to decide whether the block is the fault of the host or requester's government).
Unfortunately that system is still probably too simplistic, as there are likely to be sites which almost every country agrees shouldn't be reachable, but the hosting jurisdiction doesn't have the motivation or resources to shut it down. To account for this scenario, a site should be excluded from the list if it is unavailable in more than half the countries in the world, representing more than half the population of the world.
I'm not sure how useful this objective measure would be, but it could allow the problem of censorship to be discussed in a politically neutral way. Oh, and scores for countries should be reduced by a third if the country bans Tor, and another third if it also bans VPNs.
Problem isn't even China. Far more insidious are people in democracies that try to do the same. Mayor of our capital ordered a home search because someone insulted him on Facebook. Not sure about the content what he said, it was probably decently tasteless, but I think this is disproportionate, has a chilling effect and borders on abuse of office.
Ultimately it will be people like this that make draconian laws and censorship possible, so I don't need to look for other countries.
I'm very skeptical about anything coming out of Freedom House when its chair was the co-author of the Patriot Act... like come on. There is quite an obvious conflict of interest in what this organization puts out.
More often than not, these types of organizations are used to justify support for western action in what they call "non-free" countries. It works.
Instead, I think we should focus more on improving the majority of lives of the people in the US than focusing on countries abroad.
What's the alternative? I'll tell you scientists are dying for good information (probably really are). IN a lot of authoritarian countries it does not exist, for obvious reasons. Freedom House, yeah, it has an agenda, but at the end of the day it's that data or none at all. It is the job of people using the data, not posting comments about it to do a more thorough review than it has connections, therefore, not useful.
Do you have a specific issue with the ratings? We have to ask these questions and do. We adjust our priors accordingly.
> Instead, I think we should focus more on improving the majority of lives of the people in the US than focusing on countries abroad.
Do me a favor and search for "human rights" on that page. That's kind of the whole point for a lot of but not all of these contributors. Oh, and if you care about the US - the US scores are declining.
A friend of mine recently said that Mexico was more "free" than the United States. I tried to find some analysis or discussion of this, and came across Freedom House, which rated Mexico quite poorly vs. the United States (other rankings or comparisons being irrelevant for this comment).
He was frustrated that I used some biased source to define "freedom" and challenged me to find and read the explanation they had for why Mexico was "less free" than the United States. I did so on the spot. I guess I encourage you to do so as well, as it is related to this discussion.
As far as I was concerned, he decisively won the argument and effectively dismantled any ability for me to use the Freedom House metrics in our discussion: "ironically" (but, in retrospect, kind of "as expected"), Freedom House has a completely different way of defining "freedom" than I do.
In particular, and to use some of the vernacular we use on the Internet in discussions of "freedom" with respect to things like "walled gardens": they seem to believe in "freedom from" rather than "freedom to". Freedom House cares deeply about "freedom from" even when it comes into direct conflict with "freedom to"; and in the article about Mexico, we see this in their premise that Mexico doesn't have freedom of the press... because another privacy citizen might kill you over it and get away with it due to the courts being shoddy? Is that really an argument that they are "less free" or is the issue in fact that they are "more free"?
As a tech example, I consider the Apple iPhone to be one of the least "free" platforms ever designed: it is explicitly built to restrict freedom of both users and developers to maximize Apple's profit and control both their intellectual property as well as that of their licensees.
However, assuming you believe that this also has the side effect of improving security or minimizing scams or whatever Apple claims (let's just assume it for a moment without trying to examine it deeply), I bet Freedom House would consider that extremely "free" because users would be able to go out about their business with relatively lower concern of being targeted by hackers or being stalked or whatever people tend to give up freedoms in order to prevent.
(You will see this same issue in their discussion of fake news and misinformation, on another thread here on Hacker News. I personally find the idea that the allowance of people saying incorrect things online makes people "less free" absurd and the idea that new attempts to restrict the ability to say incorrect things online is somehow "promising" for freedom to be a somewhat ridiculous parody of what the word "free" could possibly mean.)
I did a similar analysis the other day for an unrelated source, I found that somebody's "freedom index" had a lot of weight on "freedom to be an authoritarian" type things while neglecting a long list of personal freedoms.
Your friend's comment about Mexico may be debatable in some ways, but it hits upon something very important for dry, academic rankings and definitions of freedom.
I myself live in Mexico and on a practical daily level, life is in many ways more free and easy than it is in many highly developed countries that are ranked as highly free. I suspect that this applies for many other countries vs. certain developed nations.
For example, During the entirety of the COVID pandemic in particular, here, in this country, the level of control, tracking and restriction on freedom of movement and other related factors was extremely absent despite a government that's actually surprisingly experienced and has been previously applauded at dealing with pandemic responses and vaccination programs (in other words, it's not a question of aptitude, but of governing and social attitude during the pandemic). Aside from the entire debate about the need for COVID lockdowns and restrictions, one could really feel the difference in freedom of personal activity here vs. the stories being made about daily life in a number of other ostensibly far freer countries such as Australia, which has during COVID and for other reasons unrelated slid ever more into something resembling an authoritarian state.
That's just one example, and not an attempt to slide into a debate about COVID, just a presently relevant case sample of the times.
My overall point comes back to what I said at the beginning: that there are formal factors for freedom rankings, but also, there are practical factors that are hard to measure but often very valid when it comes to the business of daily life. They're worth keeping in mind too, because being free is also an innately human experience, not just a specific academic datum.
Also, Mexico legally has extremely strong press freedom, at all levels. The country is however grotesquely insecure in other ways and while there are virtually no authoritarian measures against press freedom, yes, reporters often die or suffer in other ways due to reasons related to pressures from organized crime and corruption. This itself could open a whole parallel debate about practical unfreedoms and academic unfreedoms, ie: countries that enshrine the formal rules of a free society but in practice lack them for numerous informal but heavy handed reasons.
Can you find a source that disproves what they're saying? I'm kinda tired of this general idea that if you dislike the person/source that's making a claim then the claim itself is inaccurate.
Generally I agree, but thinktanks exist to produce studies that strengthen a pre-established political position. Taking them as an objective source is misunderstanding what a thinktank is for.
> The United States’ score declined for the fifth consecutive year. False, misleading, and manipulated information continued to proliferate online, even affecting public acceptance of the 2020 presidential election results. The new administration took promising steps to enforce stronger protections for internet users.
Why does the proliferation of misinformation imply a lack of freedom? Surely it should be the opposite.
...yes? Absolutely yes. Freedom would certainly increase if we allowed that to happen. How could anything else be true? It may not be healthy, enjoyable, or productive, but it would definitely be more free.
I never argued that 100% freedom is good. Every law we have is effectively a limitation of freedom. But this isn't about determining what freedoms should be protected. This is about an organization who has taken it upon themselves to quantify freedom and by the looks of it their methods for doing so are illogical.
Legislative body passes a law "granting the freedom to" slap anyone in the face who utters the word "y'all". Suddenly, southerners find life a lot less free.
Freedoms can be opposed to each other. In fact, it's more the norm than the exception; different freedoms are in constant conflict with each other.
Southerners would be no less free. They would have fewer rights.
Rights != Freedom
Freedom is the absence of restraint. A right is an entitlement. They often conflict with one another.
We have many laws which sacrifice our freedoms in exchange for various rights. Depending on the trade, that can be a very good thing. 100% freedom is not desirable.
What about non-government groups organizing continuous DDOS attacks against certain websites with certain views effectively taking them down indefinitely. Is that more or less internet freedom?
If I can't communicate with you, because every communication channel is flooded with noise, and there's five people shouting in my and your ears, how am I more free? How is this situation any different from me being unable to communicate with you, period?
> there's five people shouting in my and your ears
So, accepting your absolute scenario, we have two diametrically opposed possibilities: one in which it's up to me to slog through the noise to find the signal and another (the one you're proposing) where somebody else does that for me. By now, I think it's pretty obvious that nobody - not you, not me, and definitely not an unpaid "moderator" - can be trusted to filter out just "noise" and not inject their own biases. So, yes, given just those two options I'll absolutely take the option where I have to do the work of filtering out spam myself than trusting some unaccountable partisan to do my thinking for me.
It's a lever that pries open the non-qualified 'more speech = more freedom' argument, by demonstrating very succinctly that in order to maximize freedom, we, ironically, have to restrict it.
This comment made me think a bit about the natures of freedom of speech and spam (where "spam" partially includes the scenario that you're referring to).
I've come to the conclusion that they're two completely separate problems. You can have spam with no freedom of speech, freedom of speech with no spam, or anything in-between, depending on implementation.
The problem with conventional spam is that e-mail accounts aren't usually tied to real identities (although that's arguably a good thing), and phone numbers aren't authenticated at all, and you don't need any sort of permission to call someone or send someone an email.
This isn't the case with social media platforms (and their analogous "spam"), either existing ones or theoretical ones. Signups are throttled and somewhat tied to a real identity - although even if they weren't, you can easily design a system where, say, you can't send someone a message without their permission (which some platforms e.g. Instagram do), or accounts are un-discoverable by default unless you make them visible.
Additionally, virtually every social media platform in existence gives you the ability to block users (and, very few, if any, people claim that "free speech" means that arbitrary users on a platform can't block you - almost everyone focuses on bans from the platform itself - and you're conflating the two).
Therefore, the virtual equivalent of "five people shouting in my and your ears" is not an issue because there's no virtual equivalent to "blocking" someone IRL, which trivially fixes this problem.
You're conflating "forcing everyone to hear me" (which very few people think is a good idea) with "having a presence on a platform" (which is the issue actually under contention).
In short, the issue that you're describing can be pretty trivially dealt with even when a platform has "perfect free speech" and does not remove any content that it is not legally required to.
...and, because the issue is a non-issue, it doesn't reduce freedom.
If you have a voluntary choice of whether you want to filter out, or not filter out, what you are calling "noise", then in that situation you would be more free, yes.
The solution to "noise" is give people the choice of if they want that info or not. And to allow people to choose if they want to see it, or choose if they don't want to see it.
In what scenario would the proliferation of misinformation result in you being outright unable to communicate with me? The internet is already flooded with spam, but AFAIK that has never had an adverse affect on our ability to directly communicate with one another.
> The internet is already flooded with spam, but AFAIK that has never had an adverse affect on our ability to directly communicate with one another.
It ruins email inboxes over time, without active management, and lots of people no longer answer phone calls from numbers that aren't already in their contact list, to pick just two examples. Are those not adverse effects? If there's more total communication but a given person requires 20% (just to pick a number) more time for the same amount of communication as before, is that more free? It means that person's max theoretical amount of daily signal-not-noise communicating is lower than it had been, and that they have to give up more time that could have been spent on other things, to maintain the same amount of communication.
> people no longer answer phone calls from numbers that aren't already in their contact list
It's worth noting that nobody - nobody - is doing anything to address that. They are working overtime to prevent Nicki Minaj from sharing a story about somebody she knew who had a side effect from the Covid vaccine. So not only are the beneficent censors shutting down arbitrary conversations, they're also not working on the actual nuisances that everybody might agree would have been worthwhile.
Presumably because of the 100-fold increase in communication? The parent comment's point is that the term freedom doesn't mean "the optimal balance of restrictions", it means "fewer restrictions". It may be the right move to restrict the behavior of specific actors, but that doesn't mean that restricting their actions increases "freedom".
I get that it's in vogue to redefine every word (violence, freedom, harm, etc) to pretend that policy choices don't have trade-offs, but it's a dishonest strategy that's more useful for advocacy than for understanding.
There's a big difference between "what I'm allowed to do" and "what I'm actually able to do". Either could be called freedom. Personally, I tend to favor the latter, if I have to choose between the two, much as I'd rather hold an ordinary deed to an acre of land a mile from my house than hold the absolute and eternal title of God King of some galaxy a billion light years away.
If you want to support the fight for the Internet freedom, consider donating to FSF, EFF and using devices recommended by them, especially the first: https://www.fsf.org/givingguide/v11/.
So, China is the worst because of censorship (strictly controlled information), and US is in a bad spot because of too much misinformation (too little control on information).
Ironic to see this on the front page along with the article "Misinformation on Reddit has become unmanageable, 3 Alberta moderators say (cbc.ca)" which is basically a sob story that three people are having a hard time forcing their beliefs upon unwilling communities. How sad we should feel that censors have to work so hard, etc...
Irrespective of the veracity of the claim, FreedomHouse is not a source worth trusting on an evidence loving platform like HN.
A lot of other survey orgs like Pew Research or 538 are lot more thorough, and frequently reach conclusions in complete contradiction with freedomhouse.
I would not take them as a reliable source for anything.
One knows that the narrative for what constitutes internet freedom (and as its root freedom of expression in general) has become severely warped by very recent ideological politics when the highly ambiguous term "misinformation" is now a black mark. If freedom of expression is anything at all, it's the right to espouse beliefs and ideas whose veracity wasn't first approved by any central body of people who claim to know what's best for the rest of society, even if those ideas are often full of shit and half-reasoned arguments... Truly, a total upturning of obvious ideas around freedom of expression.
As does freedom in general. Societies at large have succumbed to securocracy and censorship in all aspects of life. This is one of a few worldwide megatrends that will have major impact on future generations.
I think the real situation here is that people are becoming more aware of the profound lack of freedom that already existed. Much like we've become aware that our "free press", for example, is just a propaganda bullhorn to sell us on bullshit multi-trillion dollar wars and other giveaways to billionaire donors to politicians.
I just flat out dont believe this at all. Certain areas of the internet are increasingly censored, but its never been easier to find a group of like minded people. All of these articles about FB/Google/Nation States and the like that are killing the internet are really just click bait. You cant stop the free use of technology, nothing will. Just recently I have been astounded by the amount of useful high quality open source software. The world is OPEN
Well... they're working hard to do so. While it's true right now that, if you don't like Facebook's censorship, you're free to start up your own site, that's only true right now. We saw that Amazon took down Twitter competitor Parler at the service provider level, and I really don't think it's a stretch to imagine "problematic" sites being brought down at the hosting or even routing layer (in fact, CloudFlare has been dipping its toe in that water for the sites that nobody wants to stand up for). So, no, I don't think your suggestion that you can't stop the free use of technology is correct; we're just not there quite yet.
Take a poll of users on here. I guarantee you that 90%+ of them want all those places you listed censored as well. There's a cultural shift to shut down dissenting opinions and provide places where only like minded people associate.
This is inherently bad for everyone. You don't change anyone's opinion with segregation. You just enforce their current stances.
You can look at the comments on this post and the downvotes I received just for saying it. EVERYTIME I mention something about this on hackernews I'm downvoted.
The sentiment on here is obvious. How about this... prove me wrong. Post something about disagreement with COVID or Biden and see how it goes for you. You'll be lucky if you don't get flagged immediately.
The downvotes don't prove that you're right. I downvoted you, not for saying that places are being censored, but for claiming that 90% of the people here supported the censorship. I don't think we do.
You could be downvoted for two reasons: Either for claiming that we're pro-censorship when we're not, or for pointing out that we're pro-censorship when we are. My money is on the first reason.
Oh ok so you get to make a claim and it's perfectly fine and I'm wrong to do so?
I disagree, sorry it offends you (and obviously multiple others). Maybe open your eyes a bit and pay more attention to comments on posts on this site. Every article about social media censorship on this site is met with a plethora of ridiculous denials that it doesn't exist when any sane individual can see it clearly does.
Either they're ignorant or they just agree with it. Maybe it's the former and I am wrong but my "money" is on the latter.
You can make a claim. I can make a claim. That's all fine. (Though evidence beats claims, but I'm not sure how either of us could find actual evidence, even in principle.)
What you can't do (and I yell at a lot of others about this) is use downvotes as proof that you're right. They aren't proof, even that you're right about censorship. They just mean that people think that you're wrong, or that they think you're being a jerk. Or they can mean that people want to censor you. But if they mean that, they're kind of clueless, because at least some of us read with "showdead" turned on.
However, the conclusion is probably right, insofar as it’s meaningful to refer to internet freedom ‘around the world’, even going on a qualitative approach.
The long-term trend is the spread of China-style internet controls at the very least in non-democracies.¹ There is not much stopping this process except bureaucratic inertia. It is in the interests of the zhongnanhai not to have to interact with a world set on democratic norms contrary to its interests. It is in the interests of local governments to be able to control the threat of dissent on the internet. Although there are some unsung victories (e.g. in Malawi, Zambia, and maybe Sudan) in which incumbents were thrown out at least partly by movements in support of constitutional democracy, just as many countries are slipping away from constitutional democracy, so the pool of dictatorships open to Chinese-style internet controls is at the very least not shrinking very fast.
In the West, it’s very hard to find principled defenders of freedom of expression in any political party, and the same applies to internet freedom. If the legal situation is right, judges are more attached to it.
0: for the reasons outlined at https://samzdat.com/2018/03/26/enter-a-search-term-e-g-democ...
1: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-internet-surveilla...