Proton ’s Post [Video]

Transcript

We know how much the Internet has changed America and we are already an open society. Imagine how much it could change China. Now, there's no question China has been trying to crack down on the Internet. Good luck. But China did succeed. People call it the Great Firewall of China. And the scope of the censorship is breathtaking. If you go to sites like Twitter, Google and Facebook, this is what you get. And its success has been followed by dozens of other authoritarian governments that are censoring information, silencing dissent and stifling free speech. The Internet in Iran has been throttled and protesters have been beaten up, shot at, abducted. The Kremlin has shut down independent journalism and made it almost impossible for Russians to access Facebook, Twitter and international news sites. In 2022, more governments shut down Internet access within their borders than ever before. But censorship is not new. It was in 1450 that Gutenberg invented the printing press. And that was actually the beginning of censorship becoming a universal instrument of power. This is Ilja from Reporters Without Borders, an NGO defending independent journalism worldwide. From the beginning on, it was always justified with the idea of protection. It was meant to protect people from dangerous ideas or protect the public order. I think on the one hand, the Internet has enabled people to share free information, uncensored information. But on the other hand, taking down content has also become much easier. It���s done by machines. It's done automatically. When you use your device to connect to the Internet, your Internet service provider, or ISP, handles your connection. ISP's are the gateway to the internet. Typically, when a government wants to censor a website, it will go to its national ISPs and give them a list of the websites it wants blocked. Apps like Twitter and WhatsApp are common targets. ISPs then implement blocks using those websites��� IP addresses. So if you enter the URL for a banned website, the ISP will see that it's on the banned list and drop the connection. Online censorship is a severe issue today. We got to where we are today because as an international community, we haven't always prioritized safeguarding Internet access. This is Felicia from Access Now, a nonprofit working to defend digital rights around the world. The Internet is a facilitator of human rights, making it an obvious target for authorities that want to control and restrict people's freedom. Internet shutdowns are spreading across the globe. It's happened in democracies, in autocratic governments and under military regimes. And that is why it's important for us to join forces to push back against these practices. Online censorship is actually a life or death question, and a lot of Russians felt it during the mobilization last year. This is Ivan from Meduza, an independent Russian language news organization based in Latvia. We have observed a huge wave of interest from people in Russia. Because people were looking for escape. People were looking for the information that will save them. In 2023, Meduza was labeled as undesirable organization in Russia. It is legally forbidden to finance Meduza. To talk to Meduza. To give interviews to Meduza. To provide comments to Meduza. To post a link and Twitter to Meduza. It is a countless list of laws that we are breaking. Unfortunately, VPN is still not, you know, an ordinary thing for Russians. The government was really smart. Before 2022, they didn't block anything serious, anything critical, anything that you know, people need on everyday basis. But then in 2022, they started mass blockings. They just blocked a huge sector of the Internet. But people didn't switch to VPNs because they didn't have it in the habit before the war. And of course, we are promoting VPNs as much as possible among our readers. Freedom of speech, freedom of information is a very fragile thing. This is a phenomena that has to be protected everyday. And I mean, you have to fight for it not only if you live in Russia or you used to live in Russia and you are a Russian journalist. You have to fight for it more or less everywhere, especially in the countries where everything seems more or less normal. But there is a glimmer of good news here. We have a way to fight back. Here is Laurent. Research and Development lead at Proton VPN. VPNs are a very effective tool to work around censorship because they provide a different path to access the information on the Internet. And this path is designed to be harder to block than normal websites. A virtual private network, or VPN, improves your privacy while using the Internet. You connect your device to a VPN server via a VPN app, like Proton VPN. The connection between your device and the VPN server is encrypted. The VPN server acts as a shield that blocks the view both ways. Your ISP can't see which websites you connect to and websites can't see your real IP address. They just see the IP address of the VPN server. Every time a country decides to censor their internet, we see a huge spike of users trying to use our service. It's really important to find a VPN that you actually trust in order to make sure that your data is safe. This VPN might give their information back to the governments that they are fighting against. What is unique about Proton VPN is that it costs no money, so people in censored country can use it for free. We implemented stealth mode to make it harder for government to block the service. Because of course, if we provide a VPN that is designed to work around censorship, it becomes a target. And stealth is a way to avoid being an easy target. So stealth make it look like a normal internet connection to any website and this makes it way harder for the government to block it. People should know that Internet is at risk all over the world. And we don't know which is the next government that will decide to censor Internet.