Better link (prefer original sources): https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2016 https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2016

Better link (prefer original sources): https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2016 https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/freedom-net-2016 The "what about Snowden's revelations" argument is partially missing the point. People in the 'green' countries don't experience network-wide blocks, or loosely-targeted, blanket arrests for merely participating in platforms, even in places where other chilling-effect factors exist, like in the US [1], and Hungary [2] (both of them conductors of mass surveillance [3][4]), which are documented in detail in the long-form reports. This lack of active, direct governmental harassment of ordinary citizens is a fairly observable difference in outcomes from those places where this occurs. But in any case, their reports are more valuable than their map, which distills many disparate, sometimes orthogonal factors into one of four discrete colors. In my opinion, despite Freedom House's good content in their textual reports, the Reporters Without Borders 'World Press Freedom Index' [5] provides a ranking that more accurately represents chilling effects that are not due to direct governmental coercion. [1] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/united-states https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/united-stat... [2] https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/hungary https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-net/2016/hungary [3] http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/01/top-european-court-to-snooping-governments-mass-surveillance-needs-judicial-oversight/ http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/01/top-european-co... [4] http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/hungary-study-data-surveillance-hu.pdf http://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/hungary... [5] https://rsf.org/en/ranking https://rsf.org/en/ranking