Internet Freedom Weekly: News Recap, June 22–26, 2026
Responding to evidence that your tools don't work by announcing more of the same seems to have become the go-to strategy of some governments. For example, Australia got a peer-reviewed confirmation that its social media ban changed nothing for teenagers and responded on the same day by promising tougher laws.
Meanwhile, India blocked Telegram for six days, citing exam fraud, then separately ordered the platform to remove a product feature for every Indian user on no identified legal basis, while a political opposition leader in Russia was sentenced to seven years in prison due to a couple of old anti-war posts on the same platform.
Then there was a criminal crew that sold remote access to 73,000 firewalls across 194 countries using tools written by AI, and, as usual, much more. This recap covers nine stories published between June 22 and 26, 2026, spanning social media legislation, platform accountability, information access controls, and one serious cybersecurity investigation.
If It's Not on Google, Does It Exist?
Delisting removes content from search results without taking it offline, leaving it invisible to anyone without the direct link. Governments, copyright holders, and private individuals all have legal tools to request removals, often with no public notice.
The core problem is that someone has to decide whose right wins between the person who wants the link gone and the public with an interest in finding it. Right now, that call often lands with Google or with regulators who weren't thinking about internet users when they wrote the rules.
Norway Banned AI in Schools. Here's the Catch
Norway has banned AI tools in elementary schools, citing data collection risks and age-inappropriate content. The concern is legitimate, as unmoderated AI access for children is a real and documented problem.
Enforcement is where it falls apart. Banning AI in schools stops nothing at home, and meaningful enforcement across the open internet requires age verification, which demands identity data at scale, with all the breach risk and surveillance infrastructure that creates.
The Broker Behind FortiBleed: Anatomy of a Russian-Speaking Access Operation
A two-person crew brute-forced credentials for 73,932 Fortinet firewalls across 21,632 organizations in 194 countries, enriched the stolen data with each victim's industry, revenue, and headcount, and put it on sale. Their tools were written with AI assistance, and the attack ran at over a billion credential attempts.
The dataset's revenue column is the tell. The goal was resale to ransomware crews, not exploitation, and every organization in that file should assume it is currently on a shopping list.
India Shut Down Telegram for Six Days as VPN Downloads Hit Record Highs
India's Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology blocked Telegram from June 16 to 22 under Section 69A of the IT Act, citing fraud risks ahead of the NEET-UG re-examination. Simultaneously, authorities ordered Telegram to disable message editing for every Indian user until June 30 on no publicly identified legal basis.
VPN downloads in India surged 49% on the day of the ban, reaching 208,000 downloads, the highest single-day figure recorded since at least the start of 2025. The NTA's own press release had already confirmed that targeted channel takedowns were containing the harm, which makes the platform-wide block harder to defend as proportionate.
Ohio Wins the Fight to Keep Its Social Media Parental Consent Law Alive
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a district court ruling that had permanently blocked Ohio's Parental Notification by Social Media Operators Act, finding that NetChoice lacked standing to assert First Amendment rights on behalf of minors whose engagement its members profit from.
Ohio won. Enforcement still runs on self-reported ages, meaning a child who enters a false birthday bypasses the consent system before any record is ever created.
Google Settled Before Trial in R.K.C.'s Social Media Mental Health Lawsuit
YouTube reached a confidential settlement with plaintiff R.K.C., a 15-year-old diagnosed with major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder whose lawyers link the deterioration to autoplay and infinite scroll, weeks before the July 27 bellwether trial in Los Angeles.
The $375 million Meta paid in a prior related settlement amounted to roughly two days of the company's revenue, and Meta's stock rose 5% when the verdict was delivered. Eight more bellwether trials are being prepared, and so far nothing in the settlement math threatens how these platforms are built.
Three Months In, Australia's Social Media Ban Has Failed to Cut Teen Usage
A peer-reviewed BMJ study tracked 408 Australian adolescents before and three months after the Social Media Minimum Age Act took effect and found no statistically significant reduction in daily social media use, with a p-value of 0.60 or higher across every primary outcome. Over 85% of participants under 16 were still accessing restricted platforms at follow-up.
The government had cited 4.7 million accounts removed as proof the law was working. Account deletion does not equal behavioral change, and the BMJ study is the peer-reviewed confirmation of what was already visible in the eSafety Commissioner's own March 2026 compliance data.
Australia Toughens Its Social Media Ban After the Evidence Confirmed It Failed
On June 26, 2026, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced tougher social media enforcement laws as a government priority, on the same day the BMJ study confirming the existing ban had no measurable effect was published. The eSafety Commissioner had already described current legislation as having "very thin scaffolding" with no "potent powers" to act, and not a single fine has been issued against any platform despite documented compliance failures.
Sixteen other countries have adopted Australia's model. The age-verification systems being built out under this law will keep collecting identity data whether or not they stop a single teenager from opening an account, and a stronger version of thin scaffolding is still scaffolding.
Yabloko's Deputy Chair Gets Seven Years in Prison for Two Anti-War Telegram Posts
A Moscow court sentenced Maxim Kruglov, deputy chair of Russia's Yabloko party and former Moscow City Duma deputy, to seven years in a general-regime penal colony for two Telegram posts published in April 2022. One cited UN figures putting civilian deaths in Ukraine at 1,267 people, and the other described what Russian forces left in Bucha after withdrawing, using framing consistent with Russia's own Defense Ministry briefing from April 3, 2022.
Defense-commissioned linguistic and psychological experts found no false factual assertions and no incitement in the posts, and the prosecution's case rested on a witness who discovered the content three years after publication and reported it to an FSB officer he happened to meet. The Russian courts are not evaluating whether speech is actually false, and seven years is what inconvenience costs.
Be part of the resistance, quietly.
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Dominykas is a technical writer with a mission to bring you information that will help you in keeping your digital privacy and security protected at all times. If there's knowledge that can help keep you safe online, Dominykas will be there to cover it.
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