GreatFire Honored at Index Awards 2016

“Technology has been used to censor online speech - and to circumvent this censorship”
Fri, 2016-04-15 16:17

GreatFire took home an award at this year’s Index Awards 2016, which recognize “individuals or groups who have had a significant impact fighting censorship anywhere in the world.” GreatFire won the digital activism category for their work combatting Chinese censorship.

OTF commends GreatFire on their award and for their continued efforts to allow Internet users inside China to access blocked content.

Previously supported by OTF, GreatFire monitors online censorship in China and enables access to blocked websites and messages deleted by censors. Among their efforts, GreatFire has worked with more than 20 human rights organizations and independent media groups in China and other high-censorship environments to keep their websites accessible during times of escalated censorship, basically creating encrypted versions – or mirrored websites – that can be accessed by users inside one of the world’s most restricted Internet spaces. This has included the Chinese version of The New York Times site, China Digital Times, Pao Pao, BBC, and Google.

Here, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and OTF Principal Director Dan Meredith describe how GreatFire has worked to make Chinese censorship circumvention mainstream and accessible to all:

Projects Mentioned