Online voters choose Vietnamese blogger Netizen of the Year

Internet users from around the world turned out to vote for people who defend Internet freedom. More than 40,000 visited a Reporters Without Borders’ YouTube Channel to choose a “Netizen of the Year” from among nine nominees of bloggers or Internet journalists. The winner, announced this week, is Huynh Ngoc Chenh from Vietnam.

This represents the fourth year that we have supported the Netizen of the Year project and the first that Internet users picked the winner. Reporters Without Borders chose the nominees based on reports from its 150 correspondents around the world. According to the Reporters, Chenh’s blog attracts about 15,000 visitors per day, even though readers must use software to circumvent censorship to gain access. He focuses on democracy, human rights and the territorial disputes between Vietnam and China.



Today, 42 countries are engaged in some form of Internet filtering, reports the Open Net Institute. At Google, our 
products 
‐‐ 
from
 search 
and 
Blogger
 to 
YouTube 
and 
Google
 Docs
 ‐‐ 
have 
been 
blocked
 in more than 
30 
of 
the
 approximately
 150
 countries 
where 
we 
offer 
our 
services. We were the first company to publish a Transparency Report that shows interruptions to the flow of information from our tools and services. Google also is a founding member of the Global Network Initiative, a multi-stakeholder organization -- including human rights and press freedom groups, investors, academics, and companies -- whose members commit to protect online free expression.

We’re proud to support Reporters Without Borders with this important prize that highlights the pressure many governments around the globe are putting on the Internet.

Posted by Florian Maganza, Policy Analyst, Paris