Monthly Archives: November 2021

Dear friends, thank you for sending us your applications for country researchers. We do not have openings at the moment but stay tuned as we are planning to add more countries to our project.

Countering Internet censorhsip in Hong Kong Trends Report

January 2020 – December 2022

Description: “Netalitica director Igor Valentovitch investigated incidents of Internet filtering in Hong Kong over a period of two years. Igor shared some findings of his research in a webinar for civil society organizations on August 23rd, 2023”

Download Igor’s presentation here. The full version of his research paper on the topic will be available for download on this page by September 30th, 2023

Countering Censorship in India – Building Indian Test List

The Bachchao Project: (9-10 October, 2021)

Description: “The event is an opportunity for all of us to take a look at censorship in India and contribute to Citizen Lab test list used by researchers, academicians, organisations and policy makers to test for censorship in India. We will discuss the challenges various sectors of civil society face when it comes to freedom of expression and censorship, and collectively work towards building a list of websites to be added to the Citizen Lab test list.”

Netalitica presentation “Updating Indian test list for measuring censorship” can be downloaded here

Internet Measurement Village

Internet Freedom Festival (Valencia, Spain – April, 2020)

Netalitica run a workshop that introduced the audience to the database for measuring Internet censorship (aka Citizen Lab test lists), discussed structure of test lists and most common problems associated with them. We offered step-by-step instructions how to tackle problematic entries and update the database. In the second part of the workshop, Netalitica presented results from measuring Internet filtering in mainland Russia and Crimea during the 2018 presidential elections to share insights into conducting network measurements and processing raw data.

Our presentation “Test lists for measuring internet censorship – applicability, problems & solutions (IFF)” can be downloaded here

Workshop on Measuring Internet Censorship

Open Technology Fund Summit (Taipei, Taiwan – November, 2019)

The workshop introduces existing databases for measuring internet censorship, looks into their major flows and ways to fix them. The second part of the workshop presents findings from a comparative study of Netalitica’s measuring of online filtering in Russia and Crimea during the Russian presidential elections in 2018.

Our presentation “Test lists for measuring Internet censorship – OTF Summit” can be downloaded here

Workshop on Measuring and Analyzing Internet Censorship

Internet Freedom Festival (Valencia, Spain – April, 2019)

Probing for blocking of critical online platforms is a key component of every project that aims to assess information controls in censorship hotspots around the world. We used OONI Probes to conduct web connectivity tests in six former Soviet Union countries over a period of three months. In this workshop, Igor shares his experience from preparing and conducting these tests. The workshop is geared towards Internet researchers, activists, media and human rights organizations. It offers practical advice regarding the following issues:

• How to organize and prepare for network connectivity tests?
• How to recruit and train testers?
• How to update Citizen Lab test lists?
• How to diversify your tests with innovative testing approaches?
• Data processing and analysis
• Alternative network measurement tools

Netalitica’s presentation “Conducting network measurements in censorship hotspots – lessons from the field” can be downloaded here

Citizen Lab Summer Institute

Munk School of Global Affairs – University of Toronto (Toronto, Canada – August, 2019)

Netalitica’s presentation “Improving test lists of censored online content” can be downloaded here

Internet censorship is often described as a “cat and mouse” game where “cats” (states) constantly invent methods and technologies to block access to online content, whereas “mice” (Internet freedom actors) try to counteract their efforts with innovative technologies.

In such dynamically changing Internet environment, researchers rely more often now on custom test lists that are tailored to answer specific research questions, rather than using the standard country lists.

Here, you will find curated test lists and methodologies developed by researchers to examine specific features of Internet censorship regimes in various parts of the world.

Project: Internet blocking during 2018 Russian presidential elections

Authors: Igor Valentovitch and Ksenia Ermoshina

Resume: In their paper, Igor and Ksenia investigate if 2018 Russian presidential elections affected Internet freedom in Russia and Crimea, and if Internet censorship was experienced in the same way in both territories.

They found no empirical evidence suggesting that the elections caused filtering of critical or liberal resources in both territories. Platforms that were blocked before the elections, remained inaccessible during and after them.

However, Igor and Ksenia discovered that blocking of critical content was not carried out uniformly in mainland Russia and Crimea. Instead, they documented cases of under-blocking and over-blocking of websites to occur on the networks of various ISPs, which made them conclude that Internet filtering in Russia is not uniform across the board.

Methodology: The researchers conducted daily network measurements for four months – before, during and after the elections. They set up a custom test list of critical websites that were either blocked by the Russian telecommunications authority or had a high probability of being blocked during the elections. The network measurements were conducted with OONI Probes on the networks of 70+ ISPs

Internet censorship is broadly defined as blocking access to websites, Internet outages and shutdowns, online trolling and self-censorship online. Netalitica focuses on investigating Internet blocking occurring on the network level such as blocking of websites and applications by local Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

In authoritarian states, ISPs fulfill “requests” from authorities to block access to specific content for political, economic, religious and other reasons. Democratic and authoritarian countries alike may adopt restrictive Internet legislations that oblige local ISPs to block access to certain content (e.g. child pornography, hate speech, terrorist and militant websites) in order to protect society. Such legislations may be vaguely formulated, thus leaving room for blocking liberal voices as well.

OpenNet Initiative, ONI Access and Freedom House provide great overview of the censorship regimes in countries around the world. Other useful sources include Citizen Lab , Reporters Without Borders, Article 19, Internet Monitor.

ISPs can block access to select websites by a variety of methods such as IP blocking, DNS tempering, HTTP blocking, SNI filtering. The Open Observatory for Network Interference (OONI) provides an overview of these techniques. Their open-source app OONI Probe represents the industry standard for measuring Internet censorship. It uses Citizen Lab test lists to uncover blocking of websites in more than 200 countries. Other popular network measurement projects include Censored Planet and ICLab.

Citizen Lab test lists are available for download on GitHub. Each country list is made of popular locally websites that are organized into 30 thematic categories encompassing all spheres of social life (e.g. environment, communication tools, economics, political criticism, human rights, news media, and others). Besides individual country lists, there is also the Global test list, which is made of websites that have universal usability (e.g. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, CNN, BBC, DW).

Staring in 2019, Netalitica has hired researchers to update the Citizen Lab test lists for 50 countries from Asia, Africa, MENA, CIS, Latin America and Europe. Our researchers clean existing lists from faulty URLs, add fresh websites and balance the lists to make sure all thematic categories are populated with websites.

Netalitica has set up test lists for entire regions. They offer the opportunity to determine the accessibility of online platforms that are popular across multiple countries in a given geographical location. Sometimes, regional powers are involved in geo-political rivalry that manifests itself into blocking each other websites. In other instances, countries may lack well developed websites of their own in a given are (e.g. social media). Often in such cases, local users flock to platforms developed by neighbouring states because they share similar languages and/or cultural norms. Using regional lists will provide you with greater opportunity to test for censorship in a given state than using the test list for that state alone. You can download here the regional lists for MENA, CIS, Latin America and Africa.

Netalitica has updated the test lists for 48 known rivals of Internet freedom from Asia, Africa, MENA, CIS and Latin America. We have also updated the lists for Poland and Hungary with other European democracies to follow soon. The updated lists are available on Github but can also be downloaded here (click on the map).

Netalitica is a research organization investigating information controls and Internet filtering in censorship hotspots around the world. Our main project – Improving Test Lists of Censored Online Content – aims to update the largest database (aka Citizen Lab Test Lists) that network measurement tools use to uncover blocking of websites in 200+ countries. Netalitica hires researchers to update local test lists. The latter are used by research institutions, think tanks and activists to probe for Internet censoring. To meet our project objectives, we partner with major stakeholders in the network measurement field such as Citizen Lab, Open Observatory for Network Interference and local digital rights organizations from Latin America, Africa, MENA, Asia, Europe and the CIS. So far, we have updated the test list of 50 states.