14 DAY TRIAL // The Venezuelan government has reportedly expanded Internet censorship, just days after many Twitter users were telling the world that they could not view pictures anymore.
Officials are warning that social networks are being used by cybercriminals to misinform the world and support what the government is calling a “coup.”
Citizens from Tachira reported that the Internet was down in the entire state, while others were complaining about slow Internet access at night, during confrontations between the police and protesters.
Mashable reports that one researcher from Renesys, an Internet monitoring firm, says that there have been drops in bandwidth in Venezuela.
It’s not only the Internet that Venezuelans have troubles getting access to in order to find out the true story about what’s going on in the country. One local activist, Marianne Diaz Hernandez, has said that there is no independent media in the country, which means that the national TV doesn’t show that there are demonstrations in the country.
“There’s part of the country that doesn’t have any idea what’s going on, and another that goes online and looks for information on social networks,” she told Mashable.
Meanwhile, the director of CONATEL, Venezuela’s National Telecommunications Commission, claims that social networks are full of cybercriminals who hijack accounts to manipulate information.
The Freedom House doesn’t contest these issues, but this type of tactics are considered by activists to be common to Maduro’s regime.
“Manipulation of online content by the ruling party and its supporters has compromised the atmosphere of free online debate. Such careful management of content has included steering conversations along pro-government lines, hacking, discrediting opposition voices via Twitter impersonations, and encouraging self-censorship,” Freedom House wrote.
As mentioned, Twitter users that are subscribed to CANTV, a state-run ISP, haven’t been able to view pictures on the platform. The issue has been confirmed by Twitter who said that the problem wasn’t coming from the company.