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New Guide for Coordinating OONI Censorship Measurement Campaigns
by Maria Xynou 21 Mar '23

21 Mar '23

Hello, Today the OONI team published a new guide through which you can learn *how to coordinate OONI censorship measurement campaigns* with your community. Read the guide here: https://ooni.org/support/ooni-censorship-measurement-campaigns Is your country preparing for elections? Did new blocks emerge during protests? Would you like to measure censorship in different regions in your country, or in different countries around the world? Community coordination can help with rapidly measuring and responding to Internet censorship events. Through our new guide, you can learn which steps you can take to organize censorship testing with other OONI Probe users. We also share a few examples of OONI censorship measurement campaigns led by groups in the internet freedom community. We hope you find this documentation useful. Please feel encouraged to reach out with any questions or feedback. Thanks, Maria.

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Introducing OONI Probe Web
by Maria Xynou 20 Mar '23

20 Mar '23

Hello, Today, the OONI team released OONI Probe Web: a new browser-based tool for measuring the blocking of websites. *Run OONI Probe Web*: https://probe-web.ooni.org/ We built OONI Probe Web in response to long-term community feedback, requesting a censorship measurement tool that can be run from a browser, without requiring the installation of any software. With OONI Probe Web, you will test the same types of websites as with the OONI Probe apps. You can find which websites you would test here: https://ooni.org/support/faq#which-websites-will-i-test-for-censorship-with… Upon running OONI Probe Web, your test results will be published as open data in near real-time: https://ooni.org/data/ However, please note that *OONI Probe Web is very limited in comparison to the OONI Probe apps* (https://ooni.org/install/) Due to limitations in the API available to web browsers, it’s not possible to run advanced experiments necessary for accurately detecting and characterizing website blocks from a browser. We therefore kindly ask you to not treat OONI Probe Web as a replacement for the OONI Probe apps, but as a complementary tool. We encourage you to run OONI Probe Web and contribute measurements, the analysis of which will help us improve upon OONI Probe Web on an ongoing basis. You can learn more about OONI Probe Web in our blog post: https://ooni.org/post/introducing-ooni-probe-web/ We welcome your feedback, and we're happy to address any questions. Thanks, Maria (on behalf of the OONI team).

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New OONI Explorer User Guide
by Maria Xynou 15 Mar '23

15 Mar '23

Hello, Today we are excited to share that we published a new *user guide for OONI Explorer*: https://ooni.org/support/ooni-explorer/ OONI Explorer (https://explorer.ooni.org/) is the world's largest open dataset on Internet censorship, with new measurements published in near real-time. This user guide provides *step-by-step instructions* (with screenshots) on how to use OONI Explorer to investigate internet censorship worldwide. *# What you will get from this guide* Learn how to use OONI Explorer to: * Discover *blocked websites and apps* around the world * Access *measurement data* that can serve as evidence of internet censorship * Generate *charts* based on aggregate views of OONI data * *Compare censorship* across countries and networks * Filter measurements based on various parameters (such as country, ASN, date range, OONI Probe test, websites categories, domains, etc.) Upon reading this guide, we hope you will feel empowered to investigate internet censorship through the use of OONI Explorer. We thank all OONI Probe (https://ooni.org/install/) users worldwide who have contributed – and continue to contribute – measurements, shedding light on internet censorship. If you have any questions or feedback, please let us know. Thanks, Maria (on behalf of the OONI team).

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New post on analysis of failed OONI measurements
by Maria Xynou 13 Mar '23

13 Mar '23

Hello, Today, Gurshabad Grover (OTF Information Controls Research Fellow at OONI) and Simone Basso (OONI engineer) published a new post titled: "*How we're improving OONI data quality: An analysis of failed measurements*". Read this post here: https://ooni.org/post/improving-data-quality-analysis-of-failed-measurement… You may have noticed that some OONI measurements are annotated as "failed". This happens when the OONI Probe experiment fails to perform as expected (e.g due to bugs). To better understand why some OONI measurements fail, Gurshabad and Simone analyzed 100 of the most failed Web Connectivity measurements collected (during 3 days in June 2022) from *India, Indonesia, and Pakistan* (300 measurements in total). They found that Web Connectivity measurements failed to the following reasons: * Instance of internet censorship * Tested website was down * Tested website was misconfigured * Bugs Out of the 3 countries, they found that *most failed measurements (more than 75%) from Pakistan and Indonesia were symptomatic of internet censorship*. Based on this study, the authors identified some next steps for improving OONI data quality: https://ooni.org/post/improving-data-quality-analysis-of-failed-measurement… We encourage researchers to analyze failed OONI measurements and help us further improve OONI data quality. Thanks, OONI team.

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New Report on Internet Censorship in Azerbaijan
by Maria Xynou 28 Feb '23

28 Feb '23

Hello, Today, in collaboration with Azerbaijan Internet Watch, we published a new report on Internet censorship in Azerbaijan. Read the report here: https://ooni.org/post/2023-azerbaijan-internet-censorship/ As part of our analysis of OONI measurements collected from Azerbaijan between January 2022 to February 2023, we found: ** Blocking of news media websites.* Azerbaijan continues to block access to several independent news media websites. OONI data also suggests that some ISPs in Azerbaijan may have started blocking access to the Guardian on 25th December 2022. ** Azerbaijan and Russia block each other’s news media.* In early June 2022, Azerbaijan started blocking access to Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti media website. Since (at least) 7th June 2022, Russian ISPs have been blocking access to Azerbaijani news media websites (haqqin.az, minval.az, oxu.az, ru.oxu.az, ru.baku.ws). These blocks remain ongoing. ** Temporary blocking of TikTok amid border clashes with Armenia.* During the September 2022 border clashes, both Azerbaijan and Armenia blocked access to TikTok. While the TikTok block was lifted in Armenia by 21st September 2022 (only lasting about a week), the TikTok block remained in place in Azerbaijan until November 2022 (lasting about 2 months). ** Blocking of circumvention tool sites.* Azerbaijan continues to block access to numerous circumvention tool websites, potentially limiting the ability to circumvent internet censorship in Azerbaijan. However, most OONI measurements suggest that tested circumvention tools (Tor and Psiphon) appear to be reachable. ** Variance of censorship across networks. *While most ISPs in Azerbaijan appear to adopt similar censorship techniques (as we continued to observe connection timeouts in most anomalous measurements across ASNs), different ISPs block access to different websites over time. We thank OONI Probe users in Azerbaijan for contributing measurements, supporting this study. You can continue to monitor internet censorship in Azerbaijan based on real-time OONI data: https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/mat?probe_cc=AZ&since=2023-01-29&until=2023… Thanks, Maria.

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OONI Community Meeting: Tomorrow, 14:00 (UTC)
by Elizaveta Yachmeneva 27 Feb '23

27 Feb '23

Hello! This is a reminder that the monthly OONI Community Meeting is taking place tomorrow. We fixed the IRC bridge, so the meeting will be hosted both on IRC and Slack! Where: https://slack.ooni.org/ <https://slack.ooni.org/> (OONI Slack channel, bridged with IRC: ircs://irc.oftc.net:6697/#ooni <ircs://irc.oftc.net:6697/#ooni>) When: Tuesday, 28th February 2023 at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour) Please add topics that you'd like to discuss during the meeting in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting-keep <https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting-keep> Thanks, Elizaveta

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New Report on Internet Censorship in Russia
by Maria Xynou 24 Feb '23

24 Feb '23

Hello, Today *OONI and Roskomsvoboda co-published a new research report* documenting *how Internet censorship changed in Russia over the last year* (since the start of the war in Ukraine) based on OONI data analysis. Read our report in: * English: https://ooni.org/post/2023-russia-a-year-after-the-conflict/ * Russian: https://ooni.org/ru/post/2023-russia-a-year-after-the-conflict/ You can also read Roskomsvoboda's publication about the report here: https://roskomsvoboda.org/post/rks-ooni-odin-god/ *# Key Findings* Overall, OONI data analysis shows the *blocking of 494 domains* in Russia. Many more websites are also blocked, beyond those tested. The blocked domains fall under 28 categories, suggesting *pervasive levels of internet censorship* in Russia. *New blocks* that emerged in Russia over the last year include: * Blocking of *Russian & international human rights websites* (e.g. Human Rights Watch & Amnesty International) * Blocking of *investigative journalism & news media sites* * Blocking of *Instagram, SoundCloud and Patreon * Access to the *Tor Project's website was temporarily unblocked* in Russia between 15th to 28th July 2022. Several discontinued sites have been unblocked over the last year (possibly as part of a "blocklist cleanup"). We *confirmed the blocking of 48 domains* (including a Let's Encrypt domain) based on OONI data, which do *not appear to be included in Russia's official blocking registry*. OONI data also suggests that access to a *major CDN was blocked* in the past year. You can continue to monitor internet censorship in Russia through real-time OONI data: https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/mat?probe_cc=RU&since=2023-01-25&until=2023… We thank OONI Probe users in Russia for contributing measurements. ~ OONI team.

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OONI Community Meeting: 28th February 2023
by Elizaveta Yachmeneva 23 Feb '23

23 Feb '23

Hello, The OONI team warmly welcomes you to join us next Tuesday for our monthly community meeting. => Where? OONI Slack channel: https://slack.ooni.org/ <https://slack.ooni.org/> (unfortunately, our IRC bridge is broken <https://github.com/ooni/backend/issues/617>, so this time the meeting will be hosted only on Slack) => When? Tuesday, 28th February 2023 at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour) Please add topics that you'd like to discuss during the meeting in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting-keep <https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting-keep> The monthly OONI community meetings aim to: * Collect community feedback on OONI tools & methodologies * Address questions in relation to the use of OONI tools and OONI data * Foster discussions on internet censorship issues * Receive updates from the community We hope you can join us! All the best, ~ OONI team

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New OONI reports on censorship events in Turkey, Ethiopia, and Pakistan
by Maria Xynou 16 Feb '23

16 Feb '23

Hello, Yesterday the OONI team published *3 new reports* documenting recent censorship events: 1) *Pakistan: Blocking of Wikipedia and Deutsche Welle*: https://ooni.org/post/2023-pakistan-blocks-wikipedia-and-dw/ OONI data from Pakistan shows: * Access to Wikipedia restricted between 1st-6th February 2023 (48-hour degradation, followed by block) * Ongoing blocking of Deutsche Welle (DW) since (at least) 16th January 2023 2) *Turkey: Throttling and DNS blocking of Twitter following deadly earthquake*: https://ooni.org/post/2023-turkey-throttling-blocking-twitter/ On 8th February 2023, OONI data from Turkey shows that access to Twitter was throttled on at least 4 networks, and blocked by means of DNS interference on other networks. *3) Ethiopia: Ongoing blocking of social media*: https://ooni.org/post/2023-ethiopia-blocks-social-media/ OONI data from *Ethiopia* shows the ongoing blocking of: * Facebook and Telegram (since 9th February 2023) * YouTube (since 10th February 2023) We thank OONI Probe users in Turkey, Ethiopia, and Pakistan for contributing measurements, supporting these studies. You can continue to monitor the testing of services in each of these countries (and around the world) through OONI's Measurement Aggregation Toolkit (MAT), which publishes OONI measurements as *open data in real-time* : https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/mat Thanks, Maria.

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OONI Community Meeting: Tomorrow, 14:00 (UTC)
by Elizaveta Yachmeneva 30 Jan '23

30 Jan '23

Hi everyone! This is a reminder that the monthly OONI Community Meeting is taking place tomorrow. Where: https://slack.ooni.org/ <https://slack.ooni.org/> (OONI Slack channel) When: Tuesday, 31st January 2023 at 14:00 UTC (for 1 hour) Please add topics that you'd like to discuss during the meeting in this pad: https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting-keep <https://pad.riseup.net/p/ooni-community-meeting-keep> Thanks, Elizaveta

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