Growing Internet censorship reported in Russia
The Moscow Times reports that online freedom in Russia declined in 2017. International human rights group Agora‘s recent report (news story in Russian) recorded over 115 000 cases of Internet censorship. It notes that 110 000 of these cases involved websites, with an average of 244 web pages being blocked each day during 2017. 6 Signs There’s No Such Thing as Internet Freedom in Russia specifies six ways censorship trends can be seen. For example, in spite of strong growth in the Russian online population, Internet freedom is declining. In 2017 Freedom House ranked Russia 6.6 out of 7 (with 7 being the least free) in Internet Freedom. In a different emphasis on the same report, VOA News highlights that ‘Russia sentenced 43 people to jail over online posts last year’ underlining the report’s warning that ‘the country is slowly criminalizing internet use as the security service tightens its grip.’
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