Morocco’s Internet Freedom Declines for 9th Straight Year, Report Finds

The 2019 ranking of internet freedom places Morocco in the "partially free" category. This ranking takes into account three main criteria: obstacles to access (14/25 for Morocco), content limitations (24/35) and violations of user rights (16/40). According to the report, the Kingdom is the second best ranked country in the Arab world, after Tunisia.

It is Iceland, Estonia and Canada that occupy the top three podium positions with 95, 94 and 87 points respectively, while Syria, Iran and China are at the bottom of the ranking with 17, 15 and 10 points.

Freedom House announced in its report that it had found evidence of the existence of "advanced social media surveillance programs" in at least 40 of the 65 countries studied. Even worse, in some countries, access to the internet is at the whim of the authorities, while in others, the authorities invest in propaganda that, according to Mike Abramowitz, president of the NGO, "works better than censorship on platforms."

Even though, according to the Freedom House report, Sudan, Kazakhstan, Brazil, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are the countries where freedom has declined the most on the internet this year, improvements have nevertheless been observed in 16 states, including Ethiopia. Mike Abramowitz cited examples where technology plays a positive role in democratic change, such as in Lebanon where many individuals "rally citizens" to call for reforms.