Don’t Blink: Public Policy Snapshot for June 2022

Welcome to the “Don’t Blink” series! Every month we compile developments from around the world that shape people’s ability to participate in the free knowledge movement. In case you blinked this month, here are the most important topics that have kept the Wikimedia Foundation’s Global Advocacy and Public Policy team busy in June.

To learn more about our team and the work we do, join one of our monthly conversation hours, follow us on Twitter (@WikimediaPolicy), sign up to our Wikimedia public policy mailing list, or visit our Meta-Wiki page.

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RightsCon 2022

Wikimedians at RightsCon: RightsCon, a global summit on human rights in the digital age (hosted by AccessNow) was held online from 6–10 June, and featured ten sessions where Wikimedians were hosts and/or participants. You can read more about them in this blog post.

Foundation staff participated in various sessions, which included:

• A panel with three legislators from the Philippines, Malaysia, and Thailand, entitled “How lawmakers in Southeast Asia can safeguard human rights while addressing online disinformation during elections.” You can watch the recorded discussion here (login required).
  
• A panel, hosted by GitHub, about recent regulatory proposals to increase platform liability for online content, and the advantages and challenges of a rights-based, community platform moderation model. You can watch a recording of the “Empowering community content moderation” discussion here (login required).
  
• A panel, hosted by the Freedom Online Coalition and the Government of Canada, entitled “Advancing digital inclusion through the Freedom Online Coalition (FOC): upholding democracy and human rights in the digital age.” You can watch the recorded session here (login required).

• A workshop hosted by Wikimedia Argentina: “Using Wikipedia to advance human rights and democracy: constructive conflict to create quality articles.” Earlier in the week, we also participated in a social hour for funders and philanthropic leaders.
  
• A panel hosted by TikTok and titled “Regulation for the few or the many?”, which addressed the risks of crafting legislation with a small subset of large companies in mind as well as equitable policymaking that also works for the benefit of users.  

Asia and Australia

• Wikimedians at WikiNusantara 2022: On 5 June we attended Wikimedia Indonesia’s (WMID) conference, WikiNusantara, which brought together more than 80 Wikimedians from all around the country. Five Foundation staff members participated in the event. We spoke about global advocacy and public policy in a session, where participants requested additional time to discuss the interest that WMID and the Indonesian community have in joining conversation hours, in addition to topics such as RightsCon, advocacy for freedom of panorama , and advocacy efforts around a data protection and privacy bill. 

• ICYMI – Read our deep dive on the Australian Basic Online Safety Expectations (BOSE): On 1 June we published a deep dive on the Australian government’s approach to online safety regulation. The BOSE contain overly prescriptive content identification, removal, and enforcement expectations, as well as threats to encryption and privacy practices that could disproportionately expose historically underserved groups to online harm.

United States

• Letter to the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the draft American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA): On 13 June the Foundation sent a letter to the US House Energy and Commerce Committee, supporting their bipartisan and bicameral efforts to enact consumer privacy legislation at the federal level. We invited the Committee to work with us to improve the legislation to increase privacy protections as it moves toward final passage. You can read the letter here.

• Patents and the Public Interest panel: We participated in a panel hosted by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and the Public Interest Patent Institute on 8 June, where we talked about patents in the public interest. The session was part of Patent Quality Week in the US, which is hosted by Engine. The session delved into issues such as those raised in the Foundation’s 2021 comments to the US Patent and Trademark Office, including the detrimental effects of expanding patent eligibility for open source innovation.

Announcements from our Team

• Launch of monthly conversation hours: In June, our team launched our monthly conversation hours! These are dedicated spaces for our team to engage directly with Wikimedia volunteers, affiliates, and Foundation staff. This forum offers you an opportunity to ask questions about our work, to share information about your own projects and initiatives, and to connect and learn from each other. All details, links, and dates are on our Meta page.