As democracies around the world struggle to hold back the rising tide of authoritarianism, a similar crisis is unfolding online. Three factors converged this year to make 2018 the eighth straight year that global internet freedom declined, according to an annual report from the nonprofit Freedom House: increasing censorship in response to disinformation, the widespread collection of personal data, and a growing group of countries emulating China’s model of digital authoritarianism.

“The internet is growing less free around the world, and democracy itself is withering under its influence,” writes Adrian Shahbaz, lead author of the report. Analysts studied 65 countries, which together account for 87 percent of the world’s internet users, and rated each based on factors like barriers to access, limits on free expression, and violations of user rights and privacy. Since June 2017, the report found, internet freedom declined in 26 countries, while only 19 countries saw their scores improve. As a result, just 20 percent of the global internet population is considered “free.” The message is dire: Without significant effort on the part of tech companies, democratic nations, advocacy groups, the public, and the press, democracy might not survive the digital era.

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“Several years ago, the internet was really seen as a force for greater democratization, for pluralistic voices, and that it would put authoritarians on the back foot,” says Shahbaz. “Instead what we have seen over the past year is that many tyrants are channeling technology in order to consolidate power, smear government opponents, discredit the free press, and place activists and minorities under surveillance. Authoritarians are learning how they can use the internet for their own purposes in order to undermine democracy.”

But declines in internet freedom occurred in dictatorships and democracies alike. Freedom House downgraded both the Philippines and Kenya from “free” to “partly free.” And while the United States is still classified as a free country, the report calls out the FCC’s repeal of net neutrality, the re-authorization of the FISA Amendments Act, and the continuing problem of disinformation online as areas of concern.

The 'China Model'

This year’s report is subtitled “The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism,” and it places China at the vanguard of that movement. Not only does the country once again rank as the worst abuser of internet freedom, it is actively exporting its techno-dystopian model to other countries.

China has long used technology as an instrument of control, from its Great Firewall to, more recently, its developing social credit system and expanded use of facial recognition under President Xi Jinping. Last year the government began to implement a sweeping new cybersecurity law that broadly strengthens its surveillance and censorship powers while placing more restrictions on internet companies, including requirements to "immediately stop transmission" of banned content and to store all data on Chinese users within the country.

“This is the unraveling of the international order, this idea that there are these universal values of openness, of free expression, of privacy that should apply all around the world," says Shahbaz. "China’s general perspective is that every country has its own cultural characteristics, its own values, and it should be free to follow its own model when it comes to governing not only itself but also the internet.”

To some degree, it’s already happening. As Nicholas Thompson and Ian Bremmer wrote in WIRED earlier this year, “There’s the freewheeling, lightly regulated internet dominated by the geeks of Silicon Valley. And then there’s China’s authoritarian alternative, powered by massive, home-grown tech giants as innovative as their Western counterparts.”

Those companies are active outside China, too. Since January 2017, Freedom House counted 38 countries where Chinese firms have built internet infrastructure, and 18 countries using AI surveillance developed by the Chinese. China has also hosted delegations from 36 countries for seminars on new media and internet policy. It’s the digital arm of the country’s Belt and Road Initiative, President Xi's trillion-dollar policy combining diplomacy with infrastructure-building. “China has effectively constructed its own Marshall Plan,” Thompson and Bremmer wrote, “one that may, in some cases, build surveillance states instead of democracies.”