| Location | Control | Evasion |
|---|---|---|
| China | In 2000 the Chinese government initiated its Golden Shield Project, a program to control citizens’ internet use. Government servers prevent users from visiting blacklisted sites by routing all traffic through a small number of access points. | The anti-censorship organization GreatFire has attempted to evade the ban by creating mirror websites on cloud networks such as Amazon Web Services that it believes the Chinese government will not block because of potential economic harm to Chinese businesses. GreatFire has dubbed the strategy “collateral freedom.” |
| Culver City, CA | Internal documents from TikTok’s content-moderation team, released by the Intercept in 2020, suggest moderators were told to suppress uploads from users who are “chubby” or have an “abnormal body shape,” “ugly facial looks,” or “too many wrinkles.” The rationale given was that these videos are “less attractive” to users. | TikTok has also been accused of removing content related to gender identity and sexuality. Users have responded by using coded hashtags such as #alphabetmafia—an ironic reference to the initialism LGBTQ—which has amassed nearly two billion views on the platform. |
| Menlo Park, CA | Meta began limiting what employees could post on Workplace, its internal social-media network, in 2020. According to the company’s Respectful Communication Policy, one prohibited topic is the ethics of abortion. | After the removal of a Workplace post discussing abortion in May 2022, a female employee posted a follow-up message: “The entire process of dealing with the Respectful Communication Policy…has felt dehumanizing and dystopian.” |
| Texas | A law passed in September 2021 permits individuals to sue any person or organization facilitating an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy. Free-speech advocates believe this enforcement mechanism has led to digital self-censorship in Texas, discouraging internet users from sharing information about abortion options or organizing to support reproductive rights. | After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson overturned federal legal protections for abortion, the Electronic Frontier Foundation released a set of digital-privacy recommendations for people seeking an abortion, among them using a secondary phone, revoking location-data permissions, and encrypting text messages. |
| North Korea | North Korean citizens use custom-built Android-based smartphones installed with government applications that monitor use. One app, Trace Viewer, takes screenshots at random intervals and permanently saves them on the device in order to dissuade users from engaging in prohibited activities. | During interviews with escapees, the human rights organization Lumen discovered that some North Koreans have acquired enough technical knowledge of smartphones to evade state controls. They described a “rooting” application that gives the user the ability to modify or delete any file. |
| Iran | In early 2022 Iranian #MeToo activists sharing stories of sexual violence on Instagram were flooded with comments, messages, and follower requests from over one million internet bots. Digital forensics company Qurium traced the fake accounts to two Pakistani social-media marketing firms but was unable to determine who had paid for the bots. | Many activists made their accounts private to limit fake followers, which curtailed their ability to grow audiences. “The only place we have to spread our message about human rights is social media and Instagram,” one activist noted. |
| Russia | Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Russian government’s media-monitoring agency Roskomnadzor blocked access to Facebook, Instagram, the BBC, and the website of the Ukrainian government. In March 2022 Vladimir Putin signed into law new penalties for Russian citizens who show “blatant disrespect” online. | On February 24, 2022, the day the invasion of Ukraine began, Russian social-media users started posting coded references to mass protests, including an emoji of a person walking and a drawing of poet Aleksandr Pushkin, suggesting gathering in Pushkin Square. |
