On-going internet freedom monitoring activities reveal that social media censorship is frequently imposed by dictatorships, totalitarian, and anti-democratic regimes seeking to suppress citizens’ freedom. [2] Looking at social media censorship data, it can be seen that 31 out of 54 African countries have had some level of social media censorship since 2015. [2]
The degree of censorship fluctuates with the peak being around elections, protests, and demonstrations. Zimbabwe, Chad, Togo, Uganda, Tanzania, and Nigeria are only a few of such examples. [2]
Looking at the Asian countries in the same timeframe reveals that 29 out of 46 countries in Asia have been cracking down on social media usage since 2015. China, Iran, Indonesia, and Vietnam are only a few examples. [2]
Zooming in on the data from China alone reveals some shocking facts. Bamman et al,. (2012) report that out of 1.3 million checked messages on China's social media websites, more than 16% of users' posts (212,583) were deleted due to some sort of "politically sensitive term". [4]
