The DNS must enable expression – not silence it

The Domain Name System (DNS) is the backbone of the internet: it allows us to find what we’re looking for and makes the internet easier to navigate.

Thanks to the DNS, to find ARTICLE 19’s website we just have to remember a simple domain name (‘article19.org’). Without it, we’d have to remember a complex string of numbers (e.g. ‘2606:4700:10::ac42:a320’). And we’d have to remember a different string of numbers for each and every website we want to visit.

Yet worldwide, governments are weaponising the DNS to censor content, silence critics, and stifle the free flow of information. 

Increasingly, rather than blocking single pages (like the one you’re now reading), they are making entire domains inaccessible (such as every page starting with ‘article19.org’ – thousands of pages spanning three decades). 

This is unnecessary, disproportionate, and supercharges the risk of violating our right to speak and to know. 

Read more on the ARTICLE 19 website: https://www.article19.org/dns-must-enable-expression/