Get the latest tech news

Freedom on the Net 2024: The Struggle for Trust Online | Around the world, voters have been forced to make major decisions about their future while navigating a censored, distorted, and unreliable information space

Around the world, voters have been forced to make major decisions about their future while navigating a censored, distorted, and unreliable information space.

Since seizing power in a 2021 coup, Myanmar’s military has conducted a brutally violent crackdown on dissent and imprisoned thousands of people in retaliation for their online speech, all while building a mass censorship and surveillance regime to suppress the activities of civilian prodemocracy activists and armed resistance groups. Proposed rules from the Film and Publication Board, which were withdrawn after civil society challenged their constitutionality, would have required companies to restrict access to vaguely defined “misinformation, disinformation, and fake news,” and imposed criminal penalties—including prison terms of up to two years—for people who spread allegedly prohibited content. Successful Indonesian presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto used an AI-generated avatar to rebrand himself as a cuddly and cat-obsessed figure, appealing to younger voters and effectively papering over credible allegations that he had committed human rights abuses as a military commander before the country’s transition to democracy.

Get the Android app