Highlights – Freedom on the Net 2023

• Global internet freedom declined for the 13th consecutive year. Digital repression intensified in Iran, home to this year’s worst decline, as authorities shut down internet service, blocked WhatsApp and Instagram, and increased surveillance in a bid to quell antigovernment protests. Myanmar came close to dislodging China as the world’s worst environment for internet freedom, a title the latter country retained for the ninth consecutive year. Conditions worsened in the Philippines as outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte used an antiterrorism law to block news sites that had been critical of his administration. Costa Rica’s status as a champion of internet freedom has been imperiled after the election of a president whose campaign manager hired online trolls to harass several of the country’s largest media outlets.
• Attacks on free expression grew more common around the world. In a record 55 of the 70 countries covered by Freedom on the Net, people faced legal repercussions for expressing themselves online, while people were physically assaulted or killed for their online commentary in 41 countries. The most egregious cases occurred in Myanmar and Iran, whose authoritarian regimes carried out death sentences against people convicted of online expression-related crimes. In Belarus and Nicaragua, where protections for internet freedom plummeted during the coverage period, people received draconian prison terms for online speech, a core tactic employed by longtime dictators Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Daniel Ortega in their violent campaigns to stay in power.
• Generative artificial intelligence (AI) threatens to supercharge online disinformation campaigns. At least 47 governments deployed commentators to manipulate online discussions in their favor during the coverage period, double the number from a decade ago. Meanwhile, AI-based tools that can generate text, audio, and imagery have quickly grown more sophisticated, accessible, and easy to use, spurring a concerning escalation of these disinformation tactics. Over the past year, the new technology was utilized in at least 16 countries to sow doubt, smear opponents, or influence public debate.
• AI has allowed governments to enhance and refine their online censorship. The world’s most technically advanced authoritarian governments have responded to innovations in AI chatbot technology, attempting to ensure that the applications comply with or strengthen their censorship systems. Legal frameworks in at least 21 countries mandate or incentivize digital platforms to deploy machine learning to remove disfavored political, social, and religious speech. AI, however, has not completely displaced older methods of information control. A record 41 governments blocked websites with content that should be protected under free expression standards within international human rights law. Even in more democratic settings, including the United States and Europe, governments considered or actually imposed restrictions on access to prominent websites and social media platforms, an unproductive approach to concerns about foreign interference, disinformation, and online safety.
• To protect internet freedom, democracy’s supporters must adapt the lessons learned from past internet governance challenges and apply them to AI. AI can serve as an amplifier of digital repression, making censorship, surveillance, and the creation and spread of disinformation easier, faster, cheaper, and more effective. An overreliance on self-regulation by private companies has left people’s rights exposed to a variety of threats in the digital age, and a shrinking of resources in the tech sector could exacerbate the deficiency. To protect the free and open internet, democratic policymakers—working side by side with civil society experts from around the world—should establish strong human rights–based standards for both state and nonstate actors that develop or deploy AI tools.