Afghanistan has followed up on its promise to being filtering the Internet: the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) reports the country is now blocking Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, YouTube and a host of sites related to alcohol, gambling and sex.

The OpenNet Initiative is proud to announce the release of its newly updated social media filtering map, which displays the states and regions around the world where some of the most popular social media websites are censored.

In April the Rwandan government suspended two independent newspapers, both critical of the ruling party. The government recently announced it may start blocking one of the paper's websites online.

A year ago this week, I wrote about how China was cracking down on social media sites in preparation for the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square. This year, government censors are taking a different tack, making a flood of previously blocked sites accessible. The twist: the majority of these sites appear to be pornography.

The summer of 2009 was a hectic one for online social media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and a bevy of other sites fell under the censors' axe in China and Iran as political events — namely the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the Iranian presidential election — shook both countries. Based on testing conducted in 2008-2009, the OpenNet Initiative has compiled data on the most frequently blocked social media sites around the world.

Five days ago, the Appfrica tech blog reported an Internet blackout in Benin, a West African country roughly the size of Ohio. The outage, which also affected neighboring Togo, Niger and Nigeria, was caused by damage to the SAT-3 submarine communications cable, which links Portugal and Spain to South Africa via the West African coastline.

Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Stephen Conroy has come under fire from Australian citizens and digital activists around the world for his attempts to increase Internet filtering in Australia.