As 2018 draws to a close, we’re going back to our roots here at Advox. While our story topics run the gamut from controversial cybercrime laws to journalist arrests to fake news on Facebook, there is one issue that underlies all our work — the protection of online speech in the public interest. When it affects people’s fundamental right to access information about their political, cultural or economic realities, censorship matters to us. Here are just a few examples of censorship stories covered by Advox in 2018. Photos of protesters killed in Nicaragua, confirmed by independent news site Confidencial. Photo compilation by Confidencial. Individual photos via various social media channels. When protests mounted in a public outcry against the administration of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, multiple TV networks were taken off the air. One radio station was set on fire. Online, two independent local news sites, La Prensa and Confidencial, suffered what appeared to be distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks. Both had been reporting the most up-to-date accounts from the ground, including dispatches on violent confrontations between civilians, police and security forces in which dozens of protesters were killed. Maria Ressa, editor-in-chief of Rappler. Photo by Joshua Lim via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 Philippines) The Philippine Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revoked the business license of Rappler, one of the country's leading independent news sites in January 2018 on baseless allegations that the company accepted illegal foreign funding. Rappler has aggressively covered extrajudicial drug killings in the Philippines and has been a frequent target of attacks by president Rodrigo Duterte, who accused Rappler of being a “fake news outlet” the day after the SEC ruling. In December 2018, Rappler co-owner and editor-in-chief Maria Ressa was charged with tax fraud and a warrant was issued for her arrest, but she was released after posting bail. The Philippine National Union of Journalists said her arrest signaled that the Duterte administration “will go to ridiculous lengths to muzzle all those it does not agree with.” Screen capture from CCTV. Reporter Liang Xiangyi became the talk of the Chinese internet after she rolled her eyes at another reporter, Zhang Huijun, who had posed a long-winded and deferential question about China’s One Belt One Road project at a congressional press conference. After it aired on China’s Central Television, video of Liang's skeptical expression spread like wildfire — until internet censorship authorities banned all discussions of the eye roll. Among many “pro-eye roll” phrases censored on Weibo was this gem: “Deprived of free speech, ancient people blink their eyes as secret codes. In the new era, we have the freedom to roll our eyes.” A Moscow court announced a ban on Telegram, the privacy-friendly mobile messaging service, after Telegram’s CEO repeatedly refused to comply with demands to give law enforcement agents access to the app’s encryption keys. But instituting the ban was easier said than done. In an effort to carry out the order, the country’s federal media regulator began banning millions of IP addresses in the attempt to shut down the service, which runs on through decentralized network. This led to the blocking of countless other business sites and communications platforms including Viber, Slack, and Evernote. Later that month, the Iranian judiciary issued an order to block Telegram, citing national security reasons. Telegram also was temporarily censored during anti-government protests in December 2017 and January 2018. Jamii Forum founder Maxence Melo. Photo via Facebook. Tanzania's most popular independent news and user comment site, Jamii Forum, shut itself down in June, in anticipation of the country's “blogger tax.” The law requires Tanzanian bloggers to register and pay over $900 USD per year to publish online. Blogs and other types of online content operating without a license can be punished by a fine “not less than five million Tanzanian shillings” (around $2,500 USD), or imprisonment for “not less than 12 months or both.” Jamii has since resumed operations online. Australian Cardinal George Pell, the Vatican's third-highest ranking official, was convicted of sexual assault by a Victoria court on December 12, 2018. But Australian media didn't report on the trial or its outcome thanks to a blanket suppression order imposed by the court, on grounds that it might prejudice a subsequent trial being held in March. Catholic and international media outlets nevertheless ran with the story, risking censorship and prosecution in Australia, and fueling a firestorm of commentary and criticism of the gag order on social media.