25 Apr 2025 | Algeria, Americas, Canada, Europe and Central Asia, Hungary, Middle East and North Africa, News and features, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela
In the age of online information, it can feel harder than ever to stay informed. As we get bombarded with news from all angles, important stories can easily pass us by. To help you cut through the noise, every Friday Index will publish a weekly news roundup of some of the key stories covering censorship and free expression from the past seven days. This week, we cover El Salvador’s plan for a prisoner swap and look at how Hungary has been placed on an EU watchlist.
Political prisoners: Bukele condemned by families of American deportees for Venezuela swap plan
Last week, the Donald Trump administration once again made headlines for wrongfully deporting Maryland resident Kilmar Ábrego García to a jail in El Salvador, and failing to facilitate his return. The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, has become a prominent figure in this story, aligning himself with Trump and stating that he “does not have the power” to return Garcia to the USA – a claim that experts say is false.
Now, Bukele has proposed a deal to send 252 Venezuelans incarcerated in El Salvador (following deportation from the US) back to their home country, in exchange for Salvadoran “political prisoners” currently held in Venezuela. President Nicolas Maduro has stated that the Venezuelan nationals held in Salvadoran prisons were “kidnapped”, while Bukele has accused Maduro of imprisoning political opponents and activists.
These Venezuelans, many of whom are believed to have no criminal background and were deported on evidence as spurious as having tattoos, have now become pawns in a game of politics – which both their families and human rights groups alike have denounced. Nelson Suárez, whose brother is among those Venezuelans imprisoned in El Salvador, told The Guardian that he feels his brother is being treated “like political merchandise”.
Under surveillance: Hungary clashes with EU over use of facial recognition tech for LGBTQ+ Pride attendees
Last month, Hungary passed a law that banned LGBTQ+ pride marches in the country, with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stating that he “won’t let woke ideology endanger our kids.” This move sparked outrage, with opposition leaders lighting flares in parliament and demonstrators taking to the streets of Budapest. Now, one aspect of the law has drawn further ire.
The new legislation allows the use of biometric cameras by police for facial recognition and tracking of LGBTQ+ demonstrators and those attending Pride gatherings, which Politico reports could be in breach of the EU’s newly adopted Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act.
The European Commission is currently investigating whether this is the case, which has increased existing tensions between the EU and Hungary’s leadership.
This is just the latest threat to democratic rights in Hungary – last week, parliament rushed through a bill to allow passports of dual citizens to be revoked if they are perceived to have acted “in the interest of foreign powers” and to have “undermined the sovereignty of Hungary”. The bill’s passing through parliament has drawn fears about how it could be abused to strip dissenters of their citizenship.
AI deep fakes: False videos of James Bulger circulate on social media
While AI is being used against the public in Hungary, closer to home in the UK, public-generated AI videos have taken a concerning new turn – social media content creators are using AI to create “avatars” of murder victims describing their own deaths.
One harrowing example includes depictions of James Bulger, the two-year-old boy who was abducted and murdered in 1993. Fake videos are being generated that portray Bulger himself describing the details of the crime – content which Bulger’s mother, Denise Fergus, has described as “absolutely disgusting”.
Fergus is pushing for a new law to be passed that would prohibit the creation and sharing of this sort of AI content. Such videos are becoming increasingly prevalent online, with some accounts creating likenesses for multiple murder cases.
Index’s CEO Jemimah Steinfeld spoke to the BBC this week, stating that these videos already break existing laws, and that there is a concern that further regulation could restrict legitimate, legal content.
Steinfeld said that while we should “avoid a knee-jerk reaction that puts everything in this terrible box”, she sympathises with Fergus. “To have to relive what she’s been through, again and again, as tech improves, I can’t imagine what that feels like.”
Imprisoned for a hashtag: Algeria clamps down against peaceful online activism
Amnesty International has condemned the Algerian government for its continued moves to repress online activism within the country.
The organisation reports that at least 23 activists and journalists have been arrested and convicted for human rights activism and protests over the past five months, with a focus on the use of the hashtag “Manich Radi” (“I am not satisfied”), which first came to prominence in December 2024.
The hashtag started being used after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, with many Algerians reportedly drawing similarities between the situations in Syria and Algeria and becoming hopeful of a fight for democracy in their nation.
But Algerian authorities responded to this with swift arrests, and have continued their campaign against those posting the hashtag. Algeria’s President Abdelmadjid Tebboune said of the online movement: “Let no one think that Algeria can be devoured by a hashtag”.
Academic asylum: American professors seek refuge in Canada
Hundreds of Canadian professors have urged the Canadian government to open its doors to “academic refugees” from the USA amid President Trump’s attack on universities and education.
CTV News reported this week that more than 500 Canadian university faculty members had signed an open letter calling for greater funding to Canada’s higher education system and programmes to allow more foreign professors and academics to resettle in the country, to fight the “rising anti-intellectualism” in the USA.
This follows a continuing stream of reports of American academics looking to seek exile in Canada as their professions come under fire by the Trump administration. Many US universities have seen increasing restrictions, most notably Harvard University, which is currently locked in a major funding dispute with the US federal government. The university’s president Alan Garber told NBC that he is “very concerned about Harvard’s future”.
University professors across the country are equally as concerned about the future of education in the USA. One such professor is Jason Stanley, professor of philosophy at Yale University. Stanley, who has written multiple books about fascism, recently accepted a position at the University of Toronto. He told the Daily Nous that he was leaving the USA to “raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship”.
16 Apr 2025 | Americas, Asia and Pacific, China, News and features, Newsletters, United States
This week, the global conversation was dominated by one word: tariffs. China was no exception, but not all conversations were allowed to unfold freely. On major Chinese social media platforms, searches for “tariff” and “104” (a numeric stand-in) led to dead ends, error messages or vanishing posts. It wasn’t silence across the board, though. Some conversations weren’t just permitted, they were actively promoted. State broadcaster CCTV pushed a hashtag that quickly went viral: #UShastradewarandaneggshortage. Meanwhile, posts encouraging Chinese alternatives to US goods saw a notable boost from platform algorithms.
To outsiders, this patchwork of censorship versus amplification might seem chaotic or contradictory. In reality, it follows a clear, strategic logic. China’s censorship system is built on a few core principles: block anything that goes viral and paints the government in a bad light, suppress content that risks sparking public anger or social unrest, and amplify posts that reflect well on the nation or state. At its heart, it’s about control – of the message, the momentum and the mood. “Saving face” isn’t just cultural etiquette in China, it’s political strategy.
Curiously, this is not only a top-down game. A significant driver of online sentiment today is cyber nationalism, a fast-growing trend where patriotic fervour, often fuelled by influencers, bloggers and grassroots communities, aligns with state objectives. Cyber nationalism is both tolerated and profitable. Pro-nationalist influencers can rake in millions in ad revenue and merchandise sales. The state, in turn, benefits from a wave of popular support that looks organic, and is, to a degree. But there are limits. These nationalist fires are only allowed to burn within a safe perimeter.
When it comes to the trade war, China’s censors are turning “crisis” into “opportunity”, wrote Manya Koetse on What’s On Weibo. Unless there’s a u-turn, the outlook for many Chinese people could darken – except if you’re employed as part of the booming censorship industry. That said, even there job security isn’t guaranteed: in another example of politics aligning with profit, online censorship is increasingly automated through AI. So while Washington and Beijing trade blows, China’s digital censors are aiding the government line – and scaling it too.
PS. if you want more on the inner workings of Chinese censors, read this excellent article from two years ago about how local TV stations air stories on government corruption in a way that ultimately benefits the government.
19 Mar 2024 | Asia and Pacific, News and features, Pakistan
The first time Gharidah Farooqi became a target of tech-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) was in 2014. She was working as a reporter at Samaa, a private Pakistani television channel, and covering cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan’s anti-government protest that set off from the eastern city of Lahore in Punjab province to the country’s capital, Islamabad.
“I was there 24/7 on the ground and would go to the hotel just to take a few hours of rest,” she told Index.
“My morphed photos from the field coverage were posted on social media along with sexist and vulgar comments,” recalled Farooqi, who is currently working as a senior anchor at GTV, another private Pakistani TV channel.
“For the longest of time, I ignored it, but not in [my] wildest imagination had I foreseen a Frankenstein in the making,” said Farooqi, adding that people were not used to seeing a woman reporter in the field.
“For them it was just shughal [making fun] of me,” she said.
A decade later, the attacks have not stopped. In fact, they have taken on an even uglier and more dangerous shape through generative artificial intelligence (AI), which uses models to create new content.
“Generative AI is making TFGBV even more difficult to address,” explained Nighat Dad, a lawyer and internet activist who runs the not-for-profit organisation Digital Rights Foundation (DRF), which helps Pakistanis fight against online harassment.
She said that this technology gives the creator power to change the original image, text, audio or video very quickly, in a way that makes it hard to identify whether it is an original or a deepfake, terming it “photoshopping in a more sophisticated manner”.
For Farooqi, “the period between the calm and chaos” is so short, she barely gets any respite. Along with the organised campaign by political parties’ supporters, there is a daily barrage of abuse on her social media pages, she said, adding: “It is not mere trolling; trolling is a very harmless word compared to what I’m facing.”
She’s not the only one to have had a taste of this form of violence.
“The prime targets are of course women, although a few men have also been targeted,” said Farooqi. Many have reached out to her, “mostly for emotional support” and to ask her how to seek legal help.
In her experience, female colleagues have always supported each other, and supported her in particular, for which she says she’s “eternally grateful”.
“Gharidah faces [more] attacks than any other journalist,” said Dad, who is constantly being contacted for help by women journalists.
The DRF has a helpline and a resource kit that offers a list of places offering help. Between January and November 2023, 22 female and 14 male journalists reached out to DRF with complaints including blasphemy accusations, abusive messages, bullying, blackmailing, censorship, defamation, GBV, impersonation, online stalking, phishing, sexual harassment and threats of physical violence.
While Farooqi has learnt to navigate the legal mechanisms and lodge complaints, not everyone will be as astute in warding off cyber harassment.
The Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act 2016 “carves out certain offences such as morphing of pictures or videos etc., which is done using tech tools”, according to Farieha Aziz, a cybercrime expert and co-founder of Bolo Bhi, an advocacy forum for digital rights.
But the “manner in which online harassment cases are executed and dealt with, despite complaints being lodged and arrests being made, remains problematic due to a lack of priority by the Federal Investigation Agency [FIA]. Either these women do not hear back or there is no progress on complaints they’ve made, at various stages of the case,” Aziz said.
After filing complaints eight times, Farooqi said, it was only on her most recent complaint (made last month), that any action was taken by the FIA when her personal details – her home address and her telephone number – were made public.
“I started getting anonymous calls and messages threatening me with rape and even death warnings. It was the first time that the agency took swift action and got the posts deleted,” she said.
The Karachi-based Centre of Excellence in Journalism has produced a safety kit for women journalists “on how to protect themselves and where and how to report,” Aziz told Index, adding that they also provide counselling.
“There has been pervasive and persistent online harassment, sexualised and otherwise gendered disinformation faced by women journalists in Pakistan, with many being threatened with physical assault and offline violence. We’ve witnessed multiple incidents of female journalists’ private information being leaked online with what we can say are well-planned and directed efforts to silence them and [which] resulted in stalking and offline harassment,” said a statement by the Pakistan-based Network of Journalists for Digital Rights earlier this month, condemning the use of TFGBV and generative AI to attack female journalists.
Farooqi considers generative AI as yet another weapon to silence and subdue women journalists. Claiming to be a woman with “nerves of steel”, she said she has to be thick-skinned to be able to survive these attacks. To keep sane, she advises people to never engage with attackers.
