Also this year Italy has positioned itself in the top positions of the Internet Freedom Index, a ranking that monitors freedom of expression on the Internet.
Also this year, Italy has positioned itself in the top positions of the Internet Freedom Index , a ranking that monitors freedom of expression on the Internet in twenty different countries. Italy ranked sixth, preceded by the United Kingdom (in first position) and followed by Japan, Germany, the United States and France.
The ranking (which isn’t the only one of its kind) is curated every year by Proxyrack , a company that provides proxy and VPN services. The ranking takes up the scores assigned to each country by the non-profit organization Freedom House and then recalibrates them on the basis of some parameters and evaluation criteria designed by Proxyrack.
There are four guidelines followed by the Internet Freedom Index:
- Number of people with internet access per 100,000 inhabitants
- Restrictions of any kind to the most well-known social networks
- Bans on accessing torrents, pornography, VPNs, and messaging or VoIP services
The UK scored zero on restrictions (the lower the better), 2 out of 11 on censorship and then 79 out of 100 in the internet freedom macro-category. As for Italy, our country obtained a score of 1.45 for restrictions, 2 for censorship and 75 for internet freedom. Less good access to the network: only 86% of the population can access the Internet.
Unsurprisingly, at the bottom of the rankings are China, Iran and Egypt. Overall, Proxyrack took into consideration a list of 20 different countries, which is why, for example, the ranking does not include North Korea or other countries which, like China, impose severe restrictions on freedom of expression online.