Global internet freedom declined for the fifteenth consecutive year, and half of the countries rated Free lost ground in the same period. That second fact is the one worth sitting with: the decline is no longer confined to authoritarian consolidation. Germany and the United States each fell three points, and Georgia fell four, the steepest drop among free countries. Of 72 countries assessed, conditions worsened in 28 and improved in 17, with Kenya recording the sharpest deterioration after a seven-hour national shutdown. The figures below come from Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net assessment covering June 2024 to May 2025.
TL;DR
- Global internet freedom declined for the 15th consecutive year (Freedom House)
- 72 countries were assessed (Freedom House)
- Conditions deteriorated in 28 countries (Freedom House)
- Conditions improved in 17 countries (Freedom House)
- Kenya fell 6 points, the worst decline (Freedom House)
- Venezuela and Georgia each fell 4 points (Freedom House)
- Kenya shut down connectivity for around seven hours during June 2024 protests (Freedom House)
- Bangladesh recorded the strongest improvement (Freedom House)
- China and Myanmar remain the worst environments (Freedom House)
- Iceland remains the freest online environment (Freedom House)
- Half of the 18 countries rated Free declined (Freedom House)
- Germany and the United States each fell 3 points (Freedom House)
- The coverage period is June 2024 to May 2025 (Freedom House)
1. Fifteen Consecutive Years
A metric that has moved the same direction every year since it began measuring is describing a structural condition rather than a fluctuation. Global internet freedom declined for the fifteenth consecutive year, with Freedom House naming two drivers: persistent authoritarian repression and backsliding in democracies.
The unbroken streak is worth interpreting carefully. It does not mean every country got worse every year, and it does not mean the pace of decline is constant. It means that in aggregate, across the assessed set, gains have never outweighed losses in a single annual cycle in fifteen attempts. Given how much internet access, platform architecture, and regulatory attention have changed over that period, the consistency of the direction suggests the underlying dynamic is not tied to any particular technology or political moment.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Consecutive years of global decline | 15 | Freedom House |
| Countries assessed | 72 | Freedom House |
| Countries where conditions deteriorated | 28 | Freedom House |
| Countries where conditions improved | 17 | Freedom House |
| Countries with no net change | 27 | Derived from Freedom House figures |
| Named drivers | authoritarian repression, democratic backsliding | Freedom House |
| Scale used | 100 points | Freedom House |
| Coverage period | June 2024 to May 2025 | Freedom House |
Source: Freedom House on the 15th consecutive year of decline.
2. The Country Ledger
The headline decline is an aggregate of many national movements, most of them small. Conditions deteriorated in 28 countries and improved in 17, leaving 27 with no net change, which means roughly a third of assessed countries moved meaningfully in either direction.
Kenya’s six-point fall was the sharpest of the period. Venezuela and Georgia each fell four. What distinguishes the largest declines from the smaller ones is usually a discrete event rather than gradual policy drift: a protest movement met with connectivity restrictions, an election accompanied by platform blocking, or a new law criminalising categories of speech. That episodic pattern is why year-over-year country scores can look volatile while the global trend stays smooth.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Countries with deteriorating conditions | 28 | Freedom House |
| Countries with improving conditions | 17 | Freedom House |
| Worst decline | Kenya, down 6 points | Freedom House |
| Second-worst declines | Venezuela and Georgia, down 4 each | Freedom House |
| Strongest improvement | Bangladesh | Freedom House |
| Countries assessed | 72 | Freedom House |
| Share of assessed countries that moved | roughly one third | Derived |
| Typical cause of a large single-year drop | a discrete political event | Derived |
Usage context sits in our global internet usage statistics. Source: Freedom on the Net 2025, an uncertain future for the global internet.
3. Shutdowns Are the Sharpest Instrument
Kenya’s case shows how quickly a score can move when a government reaches for the bluntest available tool. Authorities shut down internet connectivity for around seven hours in June 2024 in response to nationwide protests over tax policy, and arrested hundreds of protesters. Seven hours is short by the standards of documented shutdowns, and it was enough to produce the year’s worst decline.
The disproportion is the point. A shutdown is unambiguous, attributable, and affects every user simultaneously, so it scores heavily on an index built around obstacles to access. It is also, unlike content filtering or surveillance, impossible for a government to deny. That visibility makes shutdowns the most reliably measured form of censorship and, for the same reason, probably the least representative of the everyday experience of a restricted internet, which is more often shaped by quieter filtering and self-censorship.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Duration of the Kenyan shutdown | around 7 hours | Freedom House |
| Trigger | nationwide protests over tax policy | Freedom House |
| Month | June 2024 | Freedom House |
| Protesters arrested | hundreds | Freedom House |
| Resulting score change | down 6 points | Freedom House |
| Rank of that decline | worst of the period | Freedom House |
| Why shutdowns score heavily | affect all users, undeniable | Derived |
| What shutdowns under-represent | filtering and self-censorship | Derived |
Source: TechPolicy.Press on the 15th consecutive year of decline.
4. Democracies Are Losing Ground Too
The finding that complicates the standard narrative is happening inside the free world. Half of the eighteen countries rated Free suffered score declines, with Georgia down four points, followed by Germany and the United States down three each.
A three-point drop is small in absolute terms and significant in context, because these are the countries the index treats as the benchmark. Declines in this group typically reflect new content regulation, expanded surveillance authority, or pressure on platforms rather than the shutdowns and arrests that drive scores in authoritarian states. That difference in mechanism is important: the same downward score movement can describe a government blocking an opposition site or a legislature passing an online safety law with poorly bounded takedown powers, and conflating those is not useful.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Countries rated Free | 18 | Freedom House |
| Share of those that declined | half | Freedom House |
| Largest decline among Free countries | Georgia, down 4 points | Freedom House |
| Germany score change | down 3 points | Freedom House |
| United States score change | down 3 points | Freedom House |
| Typical mechanism in these countries | regulation and surveillance authority | Derived |
| Typical mechanism in authoritarian states | shutdowns, blocking, arrests | Derived |
| One of two named global drivers | democratic backsliding | Freedom House |
Moderation-side context sits in our content moderation statistics and information-environment context in our misinformation statistics. Source: Freedom House, United States country report 2025.
5. The Extremes and What the Score Actually Measures
At the ends of the distribution the rankings have been stable for years. China and Myanmar remain the world’s worst environments for internet freedom, and Iceland remains the freest. Stability at the extremes is expected: a country scoring near the floor has little room to fall and no incentive to change.
Understanding what the 100-point score contains matters before citing it. Freedom House scores three dimensions: obstacles to access, limits on content, and violations of user rights. A country can therefore decline because connectivity was restricted, because material was censored, or because users were prosecuted, and the headline number does not distinguish among them. That composite construction makes cross-country comparison broadly meaningful and makes any single-country score a poor guide to which specific problem a user there would encounter.
Stability at the bottom also conceals how different the worst cases are from each other. China operates the most technically sophisticated filtering apparatus in existence, built over two decades and largely invisible to the users inside it. Myanmar’s restrictions are cruder, more recent, and enforced substantially through shutdowns and prosecution. Both score near the floor, and the score cannot tell them apart. For anyone using this index to assess conditions in a specific country rather than to compare across many, the underlying country narrative carries more information than the number attached to it.
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Worst environments | China and Myanmar | Freedom House |
| Freest environment | Iceland | Freedom House |
| Dimensions scored | obstacles to access, limits on content, violations of user rights | Freedom House |
| Scale | 100 points | Freedom House |
| Countries assessed | 72 | Freedom House |
| Coverage period | June 2024 to May 2025 | Freedom House |
| Publication cadence | annual | Freedom House |
| Consecutive years of decline | 15 | Freedom House |
Privacy-attitude context sits in our digital privacy statistics. Source: Freedom on the Net report hub.
Summary: Internet Censorship by the Numbers
| Metric | Value | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Consecutive years of global decline | 15 | Freedom House |
| Countries assessed | 72 | Freedom House |
| Countries deteriorating | 28 | Freedom House |
| Countries improving | 17 | Freedom House |
| Countries with no net change | 27 | Derived |
| Worst decline | Kenya, down 6 points | Freedom House |
| Venezuela score change | down 4 points | Freedom House |
| Georgia score change | down 4 points | Freedom House |
| Kenyan shutdown duration | around 7 hours | Freedom House |
| Strongest improvement | Bangladesh | Freedom House |
| Countries rated Free | 18 | Freedom House |
| Share of Free countries declining | half | Freedom House |
| Germany score change | down 3 points | Freedom House |
| United States score change | down 3 points | Freedom House |
| Worst environments | China and Myanmar | Freedom House |
| Freest environment | Iceland | Freedom House |
| Scoring dimensions | 3 | Freedom House |
| Coverage period | June 2024 to May 2025 | Freedom House |
Methodology and Sources
- All scores, country movements, shutdown detail, and the consecutive-decline count come from Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net assessment covering June 2024 to May 2025 (report, announcement, report hub, United States country report, Freedom House annual work summary).
- Independent coverage was cross-checked against the primary report (TechPolicy.Press, Help Net Security, Media Rights Agenda, Harvard GHELI repository record).
- Data watch: the coverage period closes in May 2025, so this assessment describes conditions more than a year old at time of reading and does not capture events since. The index covers 72 countries rather than the whole world, selected to represent the majority of global internet users, so it is not a census and absent countries are not scored rather than being scored well. The 100-point score is a composite of three dimensions, meaning two countries with identical scores can face entirely different restrictions, and a score change does not tell you which dimension moved. Freedom House is an advocacy organisation as well as a research body, and its methodology, while published, involves analyst judgment rather than purely mechanical measurement. Rows marked as derived are arithmetic or direct inference from published figures.
- Last updated: August 2, 2026. We update this roundup quarterly, and the next major refresh is expected when Freedom House publishes its next Freedom on the Net edition.