Freedom on the Net 2025: New policy recommendations urge democracies, companies, and civil society to counter global digital repression
Freedom House finds that while the challenges are substantial, coordinated action across institutions can still help restore a free, open, and secure global internet.
The latest Freedom on the Net policy recommendations warn that internet freedom has been declining for 15 consecutive years and that governments, companies, and civil society must take coordinated action to halt this trajectory. The report argues that while the drivers of digital repression have remained consistent over the past decade, restrictions on expression, manipulation of online spaces, and expanded surveillance, implementation of known solutions has lagged. According to Freedom House, the risk now is that the global digital environment continues shifting toward models that view the internet as a mechanism of control rather than a space for rights, accountability, and open participation.
A central message in this year’s recommendations is the critical role of civil society. The report stresses that civil society organisations remain essential for building rights-protective tools, monitoring abuses, conducting research, and pushing for accountability. Yet funding and political backing for their work have weakened. Freedom House warns that democratic governments and the private sector should increase support, not reduce it, to avoid a further erosion of transparency, oversight, and public-interest advocacy in digital policy.
The document sets out a wide set of updated recommendations for governments and companies. It calls on states to maintain access to online platforms, avoid arbitrary shutdowns, and ground any content restrictions in established human-rights standards of legality, necessity, and proportionality. It also urges lawmakers to adopt strong transparency rules for online platforms, enable privacy-preserving access to platform data for vetted researchers, and preserve safe-harbour protections to prevent over-removal of speech. Companies, meanwhile, are encouraged to resist unlawful censorship orders, document government demands, invest in trust-and-safety and public-policy expertise, and expand mechanisms for independent research access.
Several emerging trends receive special attention. Freedom House highlights the rapid expansion of government-backed AI systems, calling for comprehensive human-rights impact assessments and strict limits on data collection. The report also flags the growing reliance on satellite internet and urges providers to challenge disproportionate government requests that undermine rights. Another area of concern is the spread of age-verification mandates; the report warns that poorly designed systems risk harming privacy, increasing data exposure, and undermining anonymity online.
In its section on information integrity, the report calls for a whole-of-society approach to counter manipulation and online influence operations, guided in part by principles set out in the Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online. It also encourages governments to fund independent media, support digital-literacy efforts, and strengthen national engagement with civil society groups that work on fact-checking and civic education. Companies are urged to invest in watermarking technologies for AI-generated content and to collaborate with independent researchers studying disinformation, harassment, and coordinated influence campaigns.
On privacy and surveillance, the recommendations reiterate that democratic governments should pursue interoperable privacy regimes to protect data while preserving cross-border flows. They also highlight the need to align surveillance practices with the International Principles on the Application of Human Rights to Communications Surveillance, including necessity and proportionality. Companies are urged to adopt end-to-end encryption as a default, minimise data collection, and challenge overbroad government requests, particularly those targeting journalists, activists, and human rights defenders.
Taken together, the recommendations outline a familiar but increasingly urgent agenda: protect expression, safeguard privacy, support civil society, and ensure that emerging technologies such as AI and satellite connectivity do not become new avenues for repression. Freedom House concludes that while the challenges are substantial, coordinated action across institutions can still help restore a free, open, and secure global internet.
