Which countries report the highest number of social media–related arrests per day?
Executive summary
The clearest, sourced claim for social media–related arrests per day comes from UK reporting: The Times’ freedom-of-information finding—cited in Freedom House’s country report—says police were making roughly 30 arrests a day for “offensive online messages,” translating to over 12,000 arrests in 2023 under specific communications laws [1]. There is no comparable, systematically compiled global dataset in the supplied reporting that converts country-by-country arrest totals into reliable “per day” rates; instead the other sources document episodic arrests and patterns of enforcement in states such as Turkey, China and India and an index-style cross-country indicator of monitoring versus arrests [2] [3].
1. The UK: the only country in the supplied reporting with a near-daily arrest figure
The Freedom House country report for the UK cites a Times FOI finding that more than 12,000 people were arrested in 2023 under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988, a volume that the newspaper summarized as roughly 30 arrests per day for offensive online messages; the same Freedom House summary notes annual arrests have more than doubled since 2017 though fewer than one in ten of those arrests in 2023 resulted in sentencing [1].
2. Snapshot evidence from other countries: arrests happen frequently but daily rates are absent
Index on Censorship’s roundup documents many well-publicized examples of people arrested over social media in countries including Turkey, China and India—cases ranging from satirical posts about a president to retweets construed as “disturbing social order” and even arrests for “liking” posts—but that reporting is case-based and does not supply steady per-day arrest metrics comparable to the UK figure [2].
3. Comparative indicators exist but don’t equal per-day arrest counts
The Digital Society Project offers a scatterplot and indicators comparing government social media monitoring and arrests for political content, which is useful for gauging relative repression and surveillance, but it does not provide a simple ranked list of arrests per day by country; that tool is better for comparative analysis of monitoring intensity rather than absolute daily arrest numbers [3].
4. Caveats, definitions and hidden agendas that shape apparent rankings
Reported arrest totals mix different legal provisions and enforcement practices—UK figures come from arrests under specific communications laws, not a bespoke “social media arrests” category, and media coverage (e.g., The Times) can frame FOI returns in attention-grabbing ways; advocacy outlets and indexes highlight illustrative or high-profile cases in authoritarian contexts to document repression, which can create a perception of systematic daily arrest rates even when comparable statistics are absent [1] [2]. The lack of a standardized global definition (what counts as “social media–related arrest”) and uneven transparency across police forces and regimes means any cross-country per-day ranking would be provisional at best [3].
5. Measured conclusion: who reports the most arrests per day in available reporting
Based on the supplied reporting, the United Kingdom is the only country with a concrete, sourced estimate — roughly 30 arrests per day for offensive online messages in 2023 as reported via a Times FOI and summarized in Freedom House’s account — and thus would top a list constructed strictly from these sources [1]. Other countries in the supplied material (Turkey, China, India) clearly arrest people over social media, sometimes for political expression or satire, but the reporting does not give reliable per-day counts to place them quantitatively against the UK figure [2] [3].