TechtechnologyGoogle Transparencyinternet censorship

55 Charts That Prove Governments Are Increasingly Censoring Your Internet

55 Charts That Prove Governments Are Increasingly Censoring Your Internet
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Freelance journalist

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Since 2009, Google has been lauded for publishing "transparency reports" on government requests to take information offline. Each time a government official asks for a search result to be blocked or a YouTube video to be removed, Google marks down the request and discloses the number of such takedowns each nation has asked for every six months or so.

While a worthy cause for transparency advocates, the reports make for dry reading -- which is why designer Sebastian Sadowski recently created a visualization of all Google's transparency reports from 2010 to 2012 for 55 nations.

The most obvious trend revealed by Sadowski's visualization: around the world, requests for censorship are increasing. Globally, Google has received 7,047 takedown requests during the 2.5-year period beginning in July 2010. However, 2,285, or nearly a third, of those takedown requests occurred during the last six months of 2012.

Check out Sadowski's visualization for all 55 countries here.

Despite the controversy in the United States surrounding the removal of copyrighted work from the Internet, copyright offenses make up only a small part of what the U.S. asks Google to censor. The majority of takedown requests, according to the visualization, are for reasons of "defamation."


Takedown requests in the U.S.

But different countries have different reasons to censor Google products. In many majority-Muslim countries -- such as Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Jordan -- requests for censorship remained relatively rare until the latter half of 2012, when YouTube takedown requests citing "religious offenses" spiked. The latter half of 2012, of course, is when the controversial trailer for "Innocence of Muslims" found its way to the Google-owned video site, sparking protests across the Muslim world.


Takedown requests in Malaysia.

Finally, one may be struck by the fact that Brazil tops the list of censoring countries in sheer number of requests. But that's in part because Brazil is one of the few countries on Earth where Google has a thriving social network. Sadowski's graphs show that many of Google's takedown requests in Brazil (and India) concern Orkut, a Google-owned social network that predates Google+.


Takedown requests in the Brazil.

While Orkut is relatively unknown in the United States, it has large user bases in those two countries -- thus contributing to the number of takedown requests Google receives from them.

[h/t Buzzfeed]

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Before You Go

How Internet Is Restricted Around The World
North Korea(01 of07)
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Internet use is extremely restricted with many of North Korea's 24 million people unable to get online. Some North Koreans can access an internal Intranet that connects to state media. Members of the elite, resident foreigners and visitors in certain hotels are allowed full access to the Internet. (credit:AP)
Iran(02 of07)
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Most Western social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter are blocked in Iran, as well as political opposition and sexually explicit websites. But proxy server sites and other methods are widely used to get around the official restrictions. Iran has announced plans to create its own domestic Internet with fully monitored content, but international experts question whether such a complete break from the worldwide Net is possible. Earlier this week, Iran accounted it had developed its own YouTube-style video sharing site. (credit:AP)
China(03 of07)
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There are more than 500 million Chinese online but they contend with an extensive Internet filtering and censorship system popularly known as the "Great Fire Wall." Censors police blogs and domestic social media for content deemed pornographic or politically subversive and delete it. Many foreign websites, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and the New York Times are blocked. Searches for controversial topics such as corruption scandals or jailed Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo return error messages. Users evade controls using proxy servers. (credit:AP)
Cuba(04 of07)
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Tight control, slow connections and high costs mean only around 5 percent of Cubans have access to the global Internet, with another 23 percent relying instead on a government intranet with very limited content. Web access is mainly via public facilities where people must first register with identification. (credit:AP)
Gulf Arab States(05 of07)
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Political sites deemed threats to the state are often blocked. Since the Arab Spring, authorities across the Gulf have stepped up arrests of bloggers and others for posted considered offensive to rulers or advocating political reforms. (credit:Getty Images)
Central Asia(06 of07)
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Internet censorship is prevalent across former Soviet Central Asian republics, but the strongest restrictions have been recorded in Iran's authoritarian neighbors to the north, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Controls are strictest in Turkmenistan, where social networking sites Facebook and Twitter are out-of-bounds, as is video-sharing site YouTube and numerous news websites. Uzbekistan has taken a less extreme approach, but sites critical of the government are blocked as a matter of course. Tajikistan, which is like those countries also ruled by an unchallenged strong-man ruler, has twice this year barred access to Facebook after web-surfers used the site to post material critical of government officials. (credit:Getty Images)
Eritrea(07 of07)
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The government restricts access to the Internet and closely monitors online communications. The U.S. State Department's latest human rights report said the Eritrean government monitored email without obtaining warrants as required by law, and that all Internet service users were required to use one of the three service providers owned directly by the government or controlled through high-ranking members of the country's sole party. But the vast majority people do not have Internet access. (credit:AP)
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