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One hundred and fifty people protested at the Church of Scientology building in Sydney, Australia, carrying signs and wearing costumes. Many protest participants were masked to maintain their anonymity and avoid possible retaliation from the Church of Scientology. Protesters chanted "Church on the left, cult on the right" (in reference to the Church that was beside the Church of Scientology building), "Religion is free" and "We want Xenu". Scientology staff locked down the building and set up a camera to record the event. After the protest in Sydney, a surge in online internet traffic due to individuals attempting to view pictures from the protest crashed hundreds of websites when a server was overloaded. The Sydney protest was one of the first worldwide, and after the first images of the protest went online a surge in traffic drove the hosting company's bandwidth usage up by 900 per cent. The hosting company Digitalis temporarily prevented access to hundreds of its clients' sites, and customer support representative Denis Kukic said the surge was unexpected: "We had no advance notice that there was going to be a sudden surge of traffic or that there would be more than 100 times the average traffic that this customer's website normally consumes."

Masked protesters in Seattle, United States congregated in front of the Church of Scientology of Washington State. Protesters were quoted as saying, "We believe in total freedom of belief. We have nothing against the people of Scientology, however the Church of Scientology has committed crimes. They're vehemently anti-opposition. Anyone who opposes them, must go down." A Santa Barbara protester emphasized that their opposition was against the organization, not the belief system, and that they supported the Scientology split-off group known as the Free Zone. Protesters turned out in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania despite unusually cold weather. The masked crowd consisted mainly of college students, including some who had travelled from as far as Penn State University.

Protesters wearing Guy Fawkes masks from the V for Vendetta film, at February 10, 2008 protest in London

Protesters in Boston, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Edinburgh, London, and other cities worldwide, wore Guy Fawkes masks modeled after the 2005 film V for Vendetta. Guy Fawkes was an Englishman executed for a 1605 attempt to blow up the House of Lords. V for Vendetta contains a retelling of this incident, and a crowd of protesters in the film wear masks identical to those worn by Project Chanology participants. The Boston Globe characterized usage of the Guy Fawkes masks as "an allusion to the British insurgent and a film depicting an antigovernment movement". Aaron Tavena of College Times wrote that the Guy Fawkes masks provided a "dramatic effect" to the protests, and Nick Jamison of The Retriever Weekly wrote: "During the February 10 protests, Anonymous was informative, Anonymous was peaceful, and Anonymous was effective. After seeing all of the pictures from the 10th with everyone in disguise, many sporting Guy Fawkes masks, I wanted to be a part of that."

Following the protests, there were reports that YouTube was freezing the view counts on videos criticizing Scientology, including clips from the protests themselves, potentially preventing them from being displaying on YouTube's front page. Similarly, the original "Message to Scientology" video had received nearly 2.5 million views and yet failed to be featured as a "most-watched". The net neutrality activist group movieLOL strongly criticized YouTube for a "display of the decay of internet freedom". YouTube's official response stated: "There was an issue with video view counts not increasing that has now been resolved. The correct number of views should be displayed in the next 24 hours. Thanks for your patience."

Jonathan Holmes, the presenter of the Australian Media Watch watchdog program, reported on two cases of media censorship of the protests. News.com.au pixelated a poster carried by a protester which was revealed, through a Today Tonight segment, to have displayed the word "CULT". The Advertiser erased Tom Cruise's name from a protest placard, rendering the placard's message meaningless, without informing its readers. The Advertiser's editor, Melvin Mansell, stated that the alteration had "slipped by" and that he was opposed to the publication of doctored photographs.