Freedom House, a non-profit research organization, has published a new edition of the annual study on freedom of speech on the Internet. According to its results, the 2018th was the eighth year in a row, in which the growth of the general level of lack of freedom in the network was recorded.

The study has been conducted in 65 countries. In 26 of which the situation worsened, positive changes were recorded in 19 counties.

In total, there are 3.7 billion network users in the world. Of these, 71% currently live in countries where people are arrested for online publication of content on political, social and religious issues. 55% of people live in countries where blocking of such content is applied.

Ukraine remained on the 33rd position in the ranking of 65 countries. As in 2017, the country received a total of 45 points out of 100 (the higher the figure, the worse). The points are charged for the presence of barriers to access, content restrictions and violations of user rights. In total, Freedom House has 9 evaluation parameters.

Ukraine opens the top five countries with the heaviest fall in the level of Internet freedom, along with Cambodia, Venezuela, Turkey and Egypt. In 2014, Ukraine had only 33 points.

Freedom House notes that such dynamic is the result of attempts to protect citizens from the “conflict with pro-Russian separatists and the information war with the Kremlin.” Freedom House also lists the blocking of popular Russian sites, the decrees of which were signed by the President Petro Poroshenko.

Finally, Freedom House considers cases in which citizens of Ukraine were sentenced to prison on charges of “calls for extremism and separatism.” The last factor is the communication problems in the occupied territories and attacks on journalists “on both sides of the conflict.”

Ukraine remained among the countries with partially free Internet. Its closest competitor in the ranking is Malaysia, which also has 45 points. Kazakhstan scored 62 points, Belarus – 64, Russia – 67. All of them belong to the group of countries with non-free Internet. The leader of the Eurasian region is Georgia with 25 points.

The world leaders are Estonia and Iceland, with 6 points each. Canada is on the third place with 15 points. Over the past year, there were no cases of state censorship or pressure on network content in these countries. The worst situation is in China (88), Iran (85), and Syria (83).

The full report on results can be found by following the link.