The VPN service TunnelBear published the results of a study on internet censorship, surveying residents of Russia, the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Norway and Sweden. 44% of respondents say that they themselves or people they know personally have been subjected to censorship online.
We conducted a global study about online censorship, and found that nearly half of internet users don’t trust the integrity of information they find online, with those in the USA feeling most impacted.https://t.co/2kyr9mWGFs
— TunnelBear (@theTunnelBear) September 30, 2020
The survey, conducted by TunnelBear in collaboration with 3Gem Global Research in September, involved 5,500 people aged 18 to 65.
According to the study, the United States experiences the strongest effects of online censorship, followed by Norway and Sweden; Russia ranks third.
More than two-thirds (69%) of respondents believe that information transmitted over the internet in their country could be censored.
29% of respondents said they would begin using VPN services if they saw compelling evidence of internet censorship by authorities. One in four respondents was not familiar with the technology.
Meanwhile, the public organisation RosKomSvoboda stated that stated, that “the results of the company’s research are surprising in terms of how low Russians’ perception of online censorship is compared with the other countries included in the sample”.
“The particular irony of the situation is that TunnelBear has been blocked in Russia since May 2018 by a decision of the Dyurtyulinsky District Court of the Republic of Bashkortostan (the text of the decision, for some reason, has not been published publicly),” RosKomSvoboda writes.
Last year, Roskomnadzor, under the threat of blocking, demanded that owners of 10 major VPN services connect to the state information system.
Most of the services refused to do so.
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