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speech deemed to endanger national security, permitting authorities to demand content removal, and mandating fines for noncompliance. A number of Turkish and Azerbaijani websites with .az and .tr domains were inaccessible for several weeks. Users also reported problems accessing TikTok,” Freedom House said.
Prominent news sites also faced technical attacks, including distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, leaving many of them temporarily inaccessible during the conflict. In a positive move, a measure that had required telecommunications companies to provide authorities with subscriber metadata in order to facilitate contact tracing, adopted in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, was lifted in September 2020 alongside a virus-related state of emergency.
The report found that global internet freedom declined for the 11th consecutive year. The environment for human rights online deteriorated in 30 countries this year, while only 18 countries registered net gains. The largest decline occurred in Myanmar, followed by Belarus and Uganda. Ecuador experienced the largest improvement, followed by The Gambia.
The US ranked 12th overall, while Iceland was once again the top performer. For the seventh consecutive year, China was found to have the worst conditions for internet freedom.
3.0 Macro Economy
12 GEORGIA Country Report December 2021 www.intellinews.com