Armenia Leads Eurasia in Online Freedom, According to Freedom House

In terms of online freedom, Armenia was recognized as the leader in Eurasia in 2019. This is evidenced by the Freedom on the Net 2019 report from the human rights organization Freedom House, as reported by Voice of America.

Globally, Armenia ranked 8th in online freedom, following the United States and ahead of France. The Republic of Armenia has surpassed not only all its neighbors but also leading countries in the online sector such as Japan and South Korea.

The main criteria for online freedom include restrictions on the right to access the internet, limitations on online content, and violations of offline rights, including surveillance of individuals' online activities or criminal and other persecution due to such activities.

The 2019 report is titled "The Crisis of Social Media," as the authors indicate that governments worldwide increasingly exploit the opportunities offered by social networks to spread fake news among citizens of their own or other countries, falsify elections, and monitor individuals. As a result, global online freedom has declined for the ninth consecutive year.

Furthermore, leaders of authoritarian countries have actively begun to leverage online opportunities, hiring paid troll armies to influence the internal situations and elections of other nations. “They have discovered that propaganda on social networks is more effective than censorship,” noted Mike Abramowitz, President of Freedom House.

According to the report, 89% of the 3.8 billion people using the internet today are subjected to online surveillance by their own or another government. Additionally, 65% of people live in countries where citizens are subjected to violence or even killed for their online activities, while around 46% of internet users have experienced temporary internet or mobile network shutdowns for various mainly political reasons.

In 2019, only 24% of the online population lived in countries with free internet. The best situations regarding online freedom are found in Iceland, Estonia, and Canada. The least free internet environments are in Syria, Iran, and China. Georgia, which lags behind Armenia by one point, is a country with free internet, while Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Russia are ranked among the world's three least free countries.

Alongside Argentina, Canada, Estonia, and Iceland, Armenia is listed among the five unique countries in the world whose governments have taken no steps to restrict online freedom. Previously, except for 2017, Armenia had also been recognized as a free country in the online realm, but it has achieved this 8th place in the global classification of internet freedom for the first time.