Belarus Ranked Seventh From the Bottom in the Digital Freedom Index

China, Cuba, and Russia are at the bottom of the index.

The ProtonVPN team, developed by the postal service ProtonMail, has published the Digital Freedom Index, dev.by reports. As part of it, experts studied the possibility of free use of various services, access to social networks, and news from independent Internet sources in different parts of the world. Belarus found itself in the anti-top in a company with countries such as China, Myanmar, and Uganda.

Researchers analyzed 70 countries in 7 categories, such as media freedom, barriers to online access, content restrictions, user rights violations, and the legality of pornography, VPN services, and social media. In compilation, open data from Freedom House and Reporters Without Borders were used.

Sweden is named the country with the highest level of digital freedom. It is followed by Portugal and Switzerland. Estonia finished the top five, Poland came 9th, Great Britain and the USA - 12th and 14th, respectively.

China has become the most not free from a digital point of view. Belarus has gone not far and took the 7th line from the bottom. Among the neighboring countries, only Russia has a worse result - it is the third from the end.

In addition, Belarus entered the 10 +% of countries where VPN services are prohibited.

“Belarus banned not only VPN services, but in general any Internet anonymizers in 2016, including proxies and Tor. Since then, digital freedom in the country has deteriorated: the government blocks access to the network, hinders the work of a free press, and restricts the right of citizens to freely express their opinions,” the authors of the report wrote.

Absolute freedom of social networks is recorded in less than 60% of the countries surveyed. Three have a complete ban on social media: China, Myanmar, and Cuba.