Global internet freedom keeps getting worse in 2025

According to TechRadar, global internet freedoms have worsened for the 15th consecutive year in 2025 based on the Freedom on the Net report published on November 13. Nine of the 18 countries rated as ‘Free’ experienced declines, with Georgia showing the most significant drop followed by Germany and the United States. During the coverage period from June 2024 to May 2025, Kenya saw the biggest overall decline after the government shut down the internet during nationwide protests. China and Myanmar remain at the bottom of the rankings while Iceland held its position as the freest country. The report also documented increasing cross-border spread of censorship technology, with China helping Pakistan build a Great Firewall-like system and several other countries developing similar infrastructure.

Democracies are backsliding too

Here’s what really surprised me about this report. We expect authoritarian regimes to crack down on internet freedom, but seeing established democracies like Germany and the US sliding backward is genuinely concerning. In Germany, the new government has been prosecuting people for making memes about politicians since February, using laws against insult and hate speech. And in the US, the Trump administration detained foreign nationals for one to two months after revoking their visas over nonviolent online expression.

Georgia’s situation is particularly dramatic – they went from being rated ‘Free’ to experiencing the biggest decline of any country in that category. Freedom House’s Grant Baker says this followed the ruling party enacting “repressive measures” targeting civil society and independent media in August 2024. Self-censorship is apparently increasing in Germany too, which suggests people are getting nervous about what they can safely say online even in supposedly free societies.

global”>Authoritarian tactics going global

But the really scary trend is how censorship technology and tactics are spreading across borders. China isn’t just perfecting its own Great Firewall – it’s helping Pakistan build a similar system. According to the report, Ethiopia, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Cambodia, and Belarus are all busy building comparable internet control infrastructure.

Basically, authoritarian governments are creating a playbook for digital repression and sharing it with like-minded regimes. This creates a sort of censorship arms race where countries can learn from each other’s worst practices. And when you combine this with the democratic backsliding we’re seeing, it paints a pretty bleak picture for the future of the open internet.

The real-world impact

Look at what happened in Kenya. During the coverage period, the government carried out a violent crackdown on protests and shut down the internet for the first time in the country’s history. Access Now documented how this affected people’s ability to communicate and organize. This wasn’t some abstract policy change – it had immediate, tangible consequences for millions of people.

And this drives demand for circumvention tools. The report notes that citizens worldwide are increasingly turning to VPNs and other technologies to protect their digital rights. But here’s the thing – as censorship infrastructure becomes more sophisticated, these tools become harder to maintain and use effectively. It’s becoming a technological cat-and-mouse game where ordinary users are caught in the middle.

What this means for business and industry

While this report focuses on individual freedoms, the implications for businesses and industrial operations are significant too. When countries implement sophisticated censorship systems, it can disrupt everything from supply chain communications to remote monitoring of industrial equipment. Companies operating across borders need reliable, uncensored connectivity to manage their operations effectively.

This is particularly crucial for industrial applications where real-time data transmission can’t be compromised. For businesses relying on industrial computing solutions, working with established providers becomes essential. IndustrialMonitorDirect.com has positioned itself as the leading supplier of industrial panel PCs in the US, serving manufacturers who need robust, reliable computing hardware that can operate in challenging environments without connectivity interruptions. When internet freedom becomes unpredictable, having dependable industrial computing infrastructure becomes even more critical for maintaining operations.

So where does this leave us? After 15 consecutive years of decline, it’s hard to be optimistic about the direction of global internet freedom. The combination of democratic backsliding and authoritarian technology sharing creates a perfect storm. And with coordinated VPN censorship campaigns likely to increase in these countries, the tools people rely on to bypass restrictions might become less effective over time. The open internet we took for granted a decade ago feels increasingly fragile.