To Safeguard Democracy, We Must Rebuild Trust Online

Last week, Tunisians had an opportunity to vote in the first presidential election since incumbent Kaïs Saïed’s antidemocratic power grab in 2021. Those in power left nothing to chance. To engineer Saïed’s reelection, they tightened the screws on what journalists could report and what people could access online. Meanwhile, nearly 2,000 miles to the east, Georgia is slogging toward next week’s parliamentary elections through a morass of disinformation. Several reports have shown how progovernment actors are spreading false, misleading, and incendiary content about the opposition and civil society, muddying the news environment that voters must traverse.

There are fundamental differences between the elections in Tunisia and Georgia, with the latter still much freer and fairer than the former. However, they both exemplify an alarming trend documented in Freedom on the Net 2024: The Struggle for Trust Online, released today by Freedom House. The report, produced in collaboration with a global network of civil society experts, shines a light on how censorship and content manipulation have been used to distort the information space during crucial votes. In elections around the world over the past year, voters were less able to make informed decisions, fully participate in the electoral process, and have their voices heard. This online interference contributed to a 14th consecutive year of decline in global internet freedom.

Heading to the ballot box with unreliable information

Censorship and content manipulation often bolster an incumbent’s preferred narratives, reduce the opposition’s ability to reach voters, or stoke doubt about the overall integrity of an election. In many cases, these online controls have reinforced offline attempts at election manipulation.

In at least 25 of the 41 Freedom on the Net (FOTN) countries that held or prepared for nationwide elections during the report’s June 2023 to May 2024 coverage period, governments blocked websites hosting political, social, and religious speech; restricted access to social media platforms; or cut off internet connectivity altogether. In Venezuela, ahead of an October 2023 presidential primary election that was organized by the opposition to choose a unity candidate who could challenge authoritarian ruler Nicolás Maduro, the government blocked websites announcing the locations of polling stations. After the general election in July 2024, Signal, X, and a host of other online platforms were blocked to suppress the news that, according to vote tallies collected by the opposition, former diplomat Edmundo González Urrutia had soundly defeated Maduro. The extreme censorship continued as the Maduro regime sought to quell mass protests, cut the opposition off from its supporters, and silence independent reporting about the election results and related state violence.

Progovernment commentators in at least 21 of the 41 countries actively manipulated online information, often promoting falsehoods about the democratic process. Content manipulation serves as a less obvious and lower-risk form of control than censorship, triggering less political blowback while still offering the high reward of reshaped electoral outcomes. In Serbia, government-aligned tabloids propagated false and misleading claims that the political opposition was buying votes ahead of the December 2023 elections. Governments in several countries also launched smear campaigns against fact-checkers who sought to identify and combat their influence operations. The ruling party in South Korea attempted to paint the country’s primary fact-checking center as biased, which ultimately contributed to the center’s decision to suspend its activities indefinitely.

Digital repression also surged outside of elections

People in three-quarters of the countries covered by FOTN faced arrest or imprisonment for simply expressing their political, social, or religious views online. In Myanmar, a country that declined to rank alongside China as the world’s worst environment for internet freedom this year, thousands of people have been imprisoned for their online speech. One woman was arrested in February for voicing her hope that those killed in the military’s crackdown on prodemocracy forces would be reborn in a peaceful country.

Some of the past year’s most serious abuses took place in the context of armed conflicts. Internet shutdowns during fighting in Myanmar, Sudan, Ethiopia, the Gaza Strip, and Nagorno-Karabakh plunged people into information vacuums, prevented the media from sharing their reporting on human rights abuses, and hampered the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian support. Journalists attempting to cover conflicts also faced targeted violence and retaliation for their work. Amid the civil war in Sudan, both the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the regular Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) allegedly tortured journalists and other civilians in response to perceived criticism online. The SAF confined Yasser Jabbara, an online journalist, in a shipping container for four days. Sudan was just one of at least 43 countries where people were attacked or killed in retaliation for their online speech during the past year—a record high in the 14-year history of FOTN.

Reviving confidence in the online environment

This year’s findings are deeply concerning, but there is still reason to be hopeful. Warnings about the possible impact of false and misleading information on elections served as a catalyst for action. Policymakers, technology companies, and civil society groups experimented with ways to strengthen platform governance, boost digital literacy and fact-checking programs, and incentivize more responsible online behavior. Some initiatives failed to adequately protect internet freedom while attempting to address problematic content. Others, however, showed potential. Examples from South Africa, Taiwan, and the European Union represent promising models for other countries seeking to counter the scourge of unreliable information in a rights-respecting way.

The health of any democracy depends on people’s ability to access high-quality, diverse, and trustworthy information. Ensuring such access will require deeper investment in local civil society groups and news outlets, which are best positioned to hold governments and companies accountable. There is also a need for laws that incentivize companies to be more transparent about how they operate. For example, rules that allow vetted researchers to study platform data can generate independent analysis on harassment and disinformation campaigns, informing innovative responses to these threats.

Any effort to restore internet freedom and democracy more broadly must be guided by a renewed commitment to the principles of free expression and access to information. So long as these foundational rights are properly defended, people will be empowered to safely and freely use the internet to do the work of democracy: sharing their ideas, forming civic movements, and building consensus on their countries’ most pressing challenges. -