Local news websites in Algeria blocked
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), three independent news websites were interrupted in Algeria amid protests calling for political reform that erupted five months ago. These websites include Interlignes Algérie, Observ’Algérie, and Algérie Patriotique which disappeared between 25 July and 5 August. ‘It is no accident that several Algerian online news outlets are reporting disruptions during a historic protest movement. Authorities and telecommunications companies in Algeria must put an end to arbitrary, opaque restrictions on digital news’, highlighted CPJ Middle East and North Africa Programme Coordinator, Sherif Mansour. Furthermore, according to NetBlocks, YouTube, Google Translate, Hangouts, and other Google services were reportedly interrupted separately for several hours on 8 August in an outage ‘consistent with methods used to restrict online content’.
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