Report lists countries with strongest government internet censorship

With its various wars and the deleterious internal climate of certain countries, the year 2023 was also marked by temporary government censorship of certain sites on the internet, for around 25 different countries. The site Top10VPN looks back at the countries that were most guilty of such an approach during the year.

An annual report from the site Top10VPN allows us to get a better idea of ​​the various censorships that took place around the world during the year 2023, while also reviewing their cost in the global economy. Because if China remains the master nation in the field thanks to permanent censorship of various sites and services accessible everywhere else, many other countries have resorted to temporary censorship to respond to various political and societal events.

China still in the lead with its permanent censorship

The Great Chinese Firewall has never been so effective and aggressive regarding content coming from the West. You just have to go there to realize this immediately: on site, it is impossible to connect to various extremely popular sites here, like Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia, Google or YouTube. The use of a powerful VPN, capable of circumventing these geolocalized restrictions, then becomes essential when you decide to do tourism in the communist country.

This permanent censorship of numerous Western services is unique in the world, and is not the only form of censorship recorded over the year: it also happens that certain countries simply cut off access to the internet or to certain sites (mainly social networks) in the case of national incidents, political events or popular demonstrations, in order to limit the impact of online speech on the population.

Many cases of temporary government censorship

The Top10VPN report reveals that a total of 196 “self-imposed major internet outages” took place during the year, in 25 different countries. The country most responsible for these temporary censorships is Iraq, with a total of 66 closures during 2023. Furthermore, the Indian state Manipur has recorded the longest period of censorship. (5,000 hours, or approximately 210 days in total).

Among the most blocked sites internationally, X.com (formerly Twitter) is the most targeted site, and for good reason: it is the network on which comments and information about various global conflicts are made. the most numerous. In total, the various governments that censored X.com blocked them for more than 10,000 hours over the year. Obviously, Elon Musk’s site is not the only social network to have been targeted, since TikTok, Facebook or Instagram were entitled to a similar sentence. The same goes for the various instant messaging services, including WhatsApp, Telegram or Signal.

In his report, Top10VPN also reveals various surprising statistics: we learn in particular that in total, more than 747 million people were affected by intentional temporary censorship of the Internet during the year (this is without counting the billion affected by censorship permanent in China).

The economic cost of these internet outages is also staggering: $9.01 billion in total. Among the nations most affected by this economic fallout, Russia leads with $4.02 billion, followed by Ethiopia ($1.59 billion) and Iran ($920 million).

Source : Top10VPN via 9to5Mac