The year 2009 marks a significant change in the Venezuelan state`s Internet policy, especially since Decree 6.649, which qualifies the use of the Internet in the public sector as a luxury expense and requires the express approval of the Executive Vice President to approve the acquisition. This measure was seen not only as a setback against the policy of prioritizing access and use of the Internet, but also as a measure incompatible and incompatible with the general legal framework, including the Constitution, that protected the promotion of science and technology in the country (Urribarrí, 2009). The anti-hate law provides for a series of measures to control online and offline speech by imposing prison sentences (up to twenty years) on those who commit acts considered incitement to hatred, while radio and television service providers face penalties for revoking the licence. and social media platforms with fines and blocks for their websites (Avendaño, 2017). The regulation, as highlighted by human rights organisations (Espacio Público, 2017), violates the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality by establishing ambiguous classifications that leave room for excessive interpretation for the executive body of the law: although it should be mentioned that in 2010 the Law on Social Responsibility in Radio and Television (SPRINGE) was reformed, including the control of the use of the Internet and digital social networks in the country, with the new name of Law of Social Responsibility in Radio, Television and Electronic Media (RESORTEMEC). This law has led to countless practices of censorship and control of information, which is paradoxical since, on the one hand, it seeks to encourage and strengthen the participation of individuals in the use of the Internet and, on the other hand, it restricts and criminalizes the free exercise of freedom of expression. In addition to these control practices, there is the Law against Hatred, Peaceful Coexistence, and Tolerance, adopted by the Constituent Assembly in 2017, through which the National Telecommunications Commission (CONATEL) seeks to control the communication system. All this has led the country`s media to adopt self-censorship practices, limiting in some cases information about insecurity, shortages of food, medicine and economic indicators, and ignoring them in others. Digital censorship practices have been evident for years when, according to several reports by the InsideTelecom service, 1019 websites were blocked in October 2014 and CONATEL in turn closes about 2.7 websites per day (Bisbal, 2016a).

CONATEL`s actions focused on electronic sites that publish the price of the parallel dollar, an example of which was the website Dollar Today (Dollar Today), which since 2015 CONATEL has been campaigning against this website and even trying to block the mobile application of the Dollar Today platform. Under the Law on Illegal Exchanges (2010), the government can block information and transactions that are not in local currency in Venezuela, which has led to censorship and blocking of online commerce (Quiñones, 2016). This means that citizens must have the resources, time, and most importantly, motivation to bypass government controls and manipulation of web traffic. This is a complex task, as citizens must not only circumvent blockades and censorship, but also distinguish when they are in the presence of opinion matrices created by the Venezuelan government to misinform. In this situation, the Priority Internet Movement was born, which became the first militant movement through the network in Venezuela, whose fundamental objective was for the government to repeal Decree 6649, which it advocated through Facebook, Twitter and blogs, so that the national and international community would know the effects of the decree and restore the Internet to its priority status, The state had been implemented by Decree 825. Despite protests, this decree has not been repealed. As a result, we are witnessing a radically negative change in public policy of the Internet by the Venezuelan government. 2001-2007: Delegated democracy and free Internet.

2007-2013: Creation of second-generation controls 2013-2015: Internet control in a hybrid regime with autocratic tendencies Finally, and as a logical consequence, it is important to mention that CONATEL also published in 2017 judgment 171 on the retention of personal data, which repeals judgment No. 572 of 2005 and expands the long list of data, Telephone service providers must require their customers to do so. In addition to increasing the retention period of this data from two years from the date of obtaining the data (for physical backups) and from three months after termination of the contract (for digital backups) to the current and totally disproportionate period of five years after termination of the service contract (Díaz, 2018). Thus, the judgment places 171 Venezuela among the countries with the longest data retention periods in Latin America, in addition to a regulation that does not meet the minimum requirements of legality, issued by an administrative authority, omits the minimum process of legislative formation and places a simple decision in the area that should be limited to an organic law. According to Puyosa (2010), e-policy initiatives4 have been piloted in the country since 2006, which are not limited to traditional political organizations, but are organizations interested in promoting deliberative democracy through civil society.