While governments can control and censor the kinds of content that people see via the various

forms of advanced technology such as firewalls, it is essential to remember that people would
try to find ways to bypass and overcome those “barriers” too in order to achieve their goals.

Elaboration:
- “When there’s a will, there’s a way” → people, especially digital natives, tend to be more
tech-savvy and will find ways to avoid or bypass those digital barriers.
- Phenomenon of “digital authoritarianism” how authoritarian regimes use the internet to
exert control over the citizens and censor the content they do not wish for the people to
see
- Utilisation of many techniques in the filtering and restriction of content → The most
common techniques are IP Blocking. In light of these filtering and censorship methods,
many people have managed to circumvent their government’s censorship by accessing
the internet through proxies and VPNs.
- By evading those censor tools, it increases the possibility of bringing free speech and
open communication to millions of users around the world who currently don't have them
→ especially prevalent in authoritarian regimes and police states such as China and
India

Examples:
- For example, researchers in the US have built an artificial intelligence (AI) tool which can
automatically learn and adapt itself to circumvent censorship on the internet, an advance
that may open up blocked online content for millions of people living in India and China.
They have tested the technology in China, India and Kazakhstan, and found dozens of
ways to overcome censorship by exploiting gaps in logic used by censors, and finding
bugs that are difficult for humans to find manually.
- Furthermore, during the Hong Kong protests, information regarding the protests were
heavily censored on social media platforms, such as Instagram, from mainland China.
9To overcome that, many protesters turned to an app called FireChat. The FireChat app
allows users to create a mesh network of phones through their radio and Bluetooth
signals, a web of connected devices. That means no Wi-Fi or cellular signals are needed
to communicate if China decides to cut off Internet access completely — a measure that,
while extreme, has been taken before in other areas of the country.
- With that app, dramatic photos and messages related to the protests could make it
through the “Great Firewall of China” and possibly inspire similar protests in mainland
China.