Launch: New OONI Censorship Findings platform

Maria Xynou 2023-11-30

Censorship Findings
Image: OONI Censorship Findings platform.

Today we are thrilled to announce the launch of the OONI Censorship Findings platform!

Internet censorship is frequently being reported around the world, but how can we verify such events with empirical evidence?

Our new platform provides short reports on internet censorship around the world based on OONI’s open data. With the launch of the platform, we are publishing 20 reports on internet censorship that emerged in 2023. In response to emergent censorship events, this platform will be updated with new reports on an ongoing basis.

Learn more below.

About OONI

If you’re not familiar with our work, the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) is a non-profit free software project which started back in 2012. Our goal is to empower decentralized efforts in increasing transparency of internet censorship around the world.

To this end, we provide free and open source software – called OONI Probe – which you can install on your mobile or desktop device to run network measurement tests to detect various forms of internet censorship. Since 2012, OONI Probe has been run in 241 countries and territories, and users have contributed more than a billion measurements which we publish as open data. Every day, new measurements from around the world are published in real-time, shedding light on emergent censorship events.

We therefore maintain what is arguably the largest open dataset on internet censorship to date.

To enable researchers and human rights defenders to investigate and respond to internet censorship based on OONI data, we created OONI Explorer (originally launched in 2016): a web platform that includes a Search Tool for exploring the measurements, and a Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT) for generating charts based on OONI data. In collaboration with our partners, we have published 85 research reports based on the analysis of OONI data. Over the past decade, OONI data has supported a wide range of research and advocacy efforts.

About OONI’s Censorship Findings platform

Today we are launching a new section on OONI Explorer: the Censorship Findings platform. This platform provides short reports on emergent censorship events around the world based on OONI data. Our goal is to support research and advocacy efforts aimed at monitoring and responding to internet censorship around the world.

With the launch of the platform, we published the following 20 reports on internet censorship events that emerged in 2023:

Each of the above reports links to relevant OONI data (that can serve as evidence of internet censorship), providing charts that are generated from our Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT). The reports also provide concise interpretation of OONI censorship measurement findings.

Why did we create this platform since we already provide OONI Explorer and publish research reports?

Using the various OONI Explorer tools requires knowing how to use them and what to look for. The OONI Explorer MAT, for example, is a powerful tool for those interested in digging through OONI data to investigate internet censorship, corroborate reported cases, and discover (potentially unreported) cases of internet censorship. But as part of community feedback, we have learned that providing summary information about key censorship findings is important for rapid response efforts. And this is precisely what we are trying to achieve with the Censorship Findings platform.

New censorship events frequently emerge worldwide on an ongoing basis, but producing an in-depth report and analysis on each event (in a timely manner) is not easily scalable. Meanwhile, rapid response efforts benefit from censorship findings that are easier and quicker to consume.

Therefore, we created the Censorship Findings platform to regularly provide short reports with summary information on emergent censorship events based on OONI data and charts. We hope that this will enable journalists and human rights defenders to more easily learn about and respond to censorship events. Over time, we expect the platform will become an archive of known censorship incidents from around the world based on OONI network measurement data.

Limitations

Currently, the Censorship Findings platform is limited to censorship events that emerged in 2023. We plan to continue publishing reports on an ongoing basis over the next years.

The platform does not include all censorship events that occurred in 2023, nor do we consider it possible to ever cover all censorship events in all countries over time. Almost every country in the world experiences some form of internet censorship, and many countries (such as Iran, China, and Russia) experience pervasive levels of censorship that change on an ongoing basis. Moreover, the availability of OONI data depends on whether, when, and how frequently OONI Probe users in a country run tests and contribute measurements. As a result, OONI measurement coverage varies significantly from country to country, limiting our ability to document and report on all censorship events.

The main criteria that influence which cases we report on the Censorship Findings platform include:

We acknowledge the potential for bias in our reporting selection. The Censorship Findings platform is our attempt to highlight some key censorship findings based on OONI data, which we hope journalists, researchers, and human rights defenders will find useful. We encourage you to also use OONI Explorer to discover many more censorship events around the world!

Acknowledgements

We thank the OONI community around the world for contributing measurements, making the creation of the Censorship Findings platform possible.