OONI Probe: Measure internet censorship and contribute to the world's largest open dataset
Measure internet censorship. Contribute to the largest open dataset
OONI Probe is a free tool that lets you measure internet censorship in your country. It checks which websites are blocked, tests the speed of your network with the NDT test developed with M-Lab, and verifies if apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Telegram are blocked. You can also check if circumvention tools work. By running OONI Probe, you contribute to the world's largest open dataset on internet censorship. Available for mobile and command line on Linux and macOS.
Run OONI Probe to check which websites are blocked in your country.
- mitxela
There's a pretty bad bias problem here because the probe app scans domains that are frequently blocked in dictatorships, but doesn't scan domains that are frequently blocked in "democracies", like Anna's Archive. Then it ends up looking like the dictatorship countries have all the censorship.
- walrus01
For everyone in this thread saying "but the platforms!", I don't disagree with you. Extensive censorship exists. But I don't believe that's the intended purpose of this tool and the metrics it collects. It doesn't measure censorship at what we would call layers 4-7 in the OSI model. It's concerned with IP reachability and layer 3. It collects valid data for that purpose.
- howunfortunate
Hmm.
I'd wager the vast majority of internet censorship is within platform, like that done by Reddit mods.
The most egregious example I've seen in my lifetime was when old Twitter decided to censor a NYPost article, down to blocking sharing in DMs.
It seems that type of example is entirely missed here. Is there any attempt to capture that signal?
- analog8374
"Dictatorship" is the standard forum design. Reddit, HN, X, Lemmy... All of them. And censorship is common. We literally prefer it that way. I think it's to create a solid blame trail. I think that's a necessary thing.
- 1e1a
Would be cool if it also measured the latency and throughput across many different protocols to detect deviations from net neutrality.