[tor-project] OONI Monthly Report: April 2019

Thu May 16 13:45:36 UTC 2019

Hello,

The OONI team made steady progress in April 2019.

## Report on social media blocking and internet blackout in Benin

In collaboration with CAIDA's IODA project, we co-published a research
report that shares network measurement data on the blocking of social
media (and the subsequent internet blackout) in Benin, amid the
country's 2019 parliamentary elections.

Our report is available here:
https://ooni.io/post/2019-benin-social-media-blocking/

## OONI Probe mobile app

Throughout April 2019, we improved testing coverage
(https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/pull/263) and we did a lot of
development work on the OONI Probe mobile apps (in preparation for the
upcoming 2.1.0 release).

We worked on adding support for re-uploading non-uploaded measurements
manually. This will allow users to submit measurements at a later stage,
even if they had disabled automatic upload or if the initial upload had
failed.

On Android:

https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/214
https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/215
https://github.com/ooni/probe-android/pull/213

On iOS:

https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/pull/258
https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/pull/265
https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/pull/266
https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/pull/267
https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/pull/268
https://github.com/ooni/probe-ios/pull/269

## OONI pipeline

We worked quite extensively on the OONI data processing pipeline to make
the annotation of confirmed and anomalous measurements more accurate,
and to extract metadata from new tests.

Our work on the pipeline can be viewed via the following pull requests:

https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/177
https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/151

We also worked on improving the documentation of the OONI pipeline and
explained how to reprocess measurements:
https://github.com/ooni/pipeline/pull/183

## System for sharing OONI metadb with third parties

We set up a system for sharing OONI's metadata database with third
parties: https://github.com/ooni/sysadmin/issues/272

This new system allows external people to set up their own instance (and
to have an always in sync version) of the OONI measurement database that
powers the OONI API and OONI Explorer.

It includes all the features that are extracted as part of the OONI
pipeline for all OONI measurements ever collected.

We also wrote documentation which explains how you can set up your own
copy of the OONI metadb:
https://github.com/ooni/sysadmin/blob/metadb-share/docs/metadb-sharing.md.

## ndt7

We aim to replace the NDT speed test (currently included in the OONI
Probe mobile app) with ndt7: a next generation speed test that will run
very short network performance tests and provide users with greater
quality information.

To this end, we have been working on implementing the ndt7 server and
ndt7 client for Measurement Kit:
https://github.com/measurement-kit/engine/issues/4. We continued to make
progress on this throughout April 2019.

## Updated test list

Leading up to India's 2019 general elections, we updated the Indian test
list to include more political party sites and election sites:
https://github.com/citizenlab/test-lists/pull/455

We also embedded several OONI Run buttons on our site
(https://ooni.io/get-involved/run/) to enable the testing of Indian
political and media websites, as well as the testing of the whole Indian
test list.

## Community activities

### Internet Freedom Festival (IFF)

The OONI team attended the Internet Freedom Festival (IFF) in Valencia,
Spain, between 1st to 5th April 2019.

As part of our participation at the IFF, we:

* Facilitated a session to collect OONI community feedback:
https://platform.internetfreedomfestival.org/en/IFF2019/public/schedule/custom/891

* Hosted the OONI Partners Meetup:
https://platform.internetfreedomfestival.org/en/IFF2019/public/schedule/custom/1472

* Presented OONI at the IFF expo:
https://platform.internetfreedomfestival.org/en/IFF2019/public/schedule/custom/1466

* Presented OONI at the Tool Showcase:
https://platform.internetfreedomfestival.org/en/IFF2019/public/schedule/custom/1451

* Co-facilitated a session with our Venezuelan partners:
https://platform.internetfreedomfestival.org/en/IFF2019/public/schedule/custom/1170

### Digital Rights & Inclusion Forum (DRIF)

OONI's Maria traveled to Lagos, Nigeria, to participate at the Digital
Rights & Inclusion Forum (DRIF) between 23rd to 25th April 2019.

At DRIF, Maria facilitated the session "Uncovering censorship evidence",
where she presented OONI and explained how digital rights communities in
Africa can use OONI Probe and OONI data as part of their work.

Information about the event is available here: https://drif.paradigmhq.org/

### Community meeting

We held the monthly OONI community meeting on our Slack channel
(https://slack.openobservatory.org/) on 30th April 2019.

As part of the meeting, we discussed:

1. Measuring HTTPS throttling in Iran

2. Starting to use a Go engine - would an OONI Probe app bigger than 50
MB be a big problem for users?

3. Sourcing more in-country collaborators for OONI Probe testing

## Userbase

In April 2019, OONI Probe was run 319,720 times from 4,805 different
vantage points in 212 countries around the world.

This information can also be found through our stats:
https://api.ooni.io/stats

~ The OONI team.

-- 
Maria Xynou
Research & Partnerships Director
Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI)
https://ooni.torproject.org/
PGP Key Fingerprint: 2DC8 AFB6 CA11 B552 1081 FBDE 2131 B3BE 70CA 417E

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