[ooni-talk] New Report on Internet Censorship in Azerbaijan

[Maria Xynou]

Hello,

Today, in collaboration with Azerbaijan Internet Watch, we published a new
report on Internet censorship in Azerbaijan.

Read the report here:
https://ooni.org/post/2023-azerbaijan-internet-censorship/

As part of our analysis of OONI measurements collected from Azerbaijan
between January 2022 to February 2023, we found:

** Blocking of news media websites.* Azerbaijan continues to block access
to several independent news media websites. OONI data also suggests that
some ISPs in Azerbaijan may have started blocking access to the Guardian on
25th December 2022.

** Azerbaijan and Russia block each other’s news media.* In early June
2022, Azerbaijan started blocking access to Russia’s state-run RIA Novosti
media website. Since (at least) 7th June 2022, Russian ISPs have been
blocking access to Azerbaijani news media websites (haqqin.az, minval.az,
oxu.az, ru.oxu.az, ru.baku.ws). These blocks remain ongoing.

** Temporary blocking of TikTok amid border clashes with Armenia.* During
the September 2022 border clashes, both Azerbaijan and Armenia blocked
access to TikTok. While the TikTok block was lifted in Armenia by 21st
September 2022 (only lasting about a week), the TikTok block remained in
place in Azerbaijan until November 2022 (lasting about 2 months).

** Blocking of circumvention tool sites.* Azerbaijan continues to block
access to numerous circumvention tool websites, potentially limiting the
ability to circumvent internet censorship in Azerbaijan. However, most OONI
measurements suggest that tested circumvention tools (Tor and Psiphon)
appear to be reachable.

** Variance of censorship across networks. *While most ISPs in Azerbaijan
appear to adopt similar censorship techniques (as we continued to observe
connection timeouts in most anomalous measurements across ASNs), different
ISPs block access to different websites over time.

We thank OONI Probe users in Azerbaijan for contributing measurements,
supporting this study.

You can continue to monitor internet censorship in Azerbaijan based on
real-time OONI data:
https://explorer.ooni.org/chart/mat?probe_cc=AZ&since=2023-01-29&until=2023-03-01&time_grain=day&axis_x=measurement_start_day&test_name=web_connectivity

Thanks,

Maria.
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