cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/52385346
Launched 11 years ago by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to combat online censorship, Operation Collateral Freedom currently enables 177 media outlets and press freedom websites that are blocked in 39 countries – more than half of them in Russia and China – to continue disseminating information online and keep reaching their public.
By duplicating censored news sites onto mirror sites hosted on the servers of major Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), it allows those living under authoritarian regimes to access their content directly from a standard web browser, without needing to install a VPN (virtual private network). No fewer than 57% of the websites protected by RSF are blocked in just two countries – Xi Jinping's China (53 blocked sites) and Vladimir Putin's Russia (49 blocked sites).
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In 2025, RSF restored access to the website of Circle 19, an independent group that provides uncensored information about China. Beijing blocked its platform less than a year after it published a statement of principles denouncing state propaganda on 4 June 2024, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre [...] This initiative aims to provide resources showing that the right to information is deeply rooted in China's traditions, history and political system, contrary to Beijing's propaganda.
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Voice of Tibet, an international radio station broadcasting in both Tibetan and Mandarin, was given 16 mirror sites in 2025. RSF also unblocked the Uyghur Post website, one of the few Uyghur-language media outlets reporting on abuses by the authorities in Xinjiang, the autonomous region in northwest China where most Uyghurs live, which has become an information black hole as a result of the regime’s repression.
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Meduza is the leading independent Russian media outlet in exile and, in March 2022, became one of the first to benefit from Operation Collateral Freedom. However, every time Meduza created a mirror site, the Russian authorities were able to quickly block it. To counter this unprecedented threat, the generation of mirror sites was automated on an unprecedented scale using technology developed by RSF combined with the technical expertise of Meduza’s staff. As a result, 4,556 mirror sites had been created for Meduza by 2025, allowing it to receive a total of 1.9 billion content requests, making it the most visited site of all those benefitting from Operation Collateral Freedom.
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