“Don’t Blink”: Protecting the Wikimedia model, its people, and its values in August 2024

Welcome to “Don’t Blink”! Every month we share developments from around the world that shape people’s ability to participate in the free knowledge movement. In case you blinked last month, here are the most important public policy advocacy topics that have kept the Wikimedia Foundation busy.

The Global Advocacy team works to advocate laws and government policies that protect the volunteer community-led Wikimedia model, Wikimedia’s people, and the Wikimedia movement’s core values. To learn more about us and the work we do with the rest of the Foundation, visit our Meta-Wiki webpage, follow us on LinkedIn or on X (formerly Twitter), and sign up to our quarterly newsletter or Wikimedia public policy mailing list.

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Protecting the Wikimedia model
(Work related to access to knowledge and freedom of expression)

Making connections at Wikimania 2024 in Katowice, Poland
[Read more information and summary materials from the Wikimedia Day Zero Advocacy Worksop and the “Common(s) Cause: Towards a shared advocacy strategy for the Knowledge Commons” side event]

Another Wikimania has concluded—an annual conference that celebrates the volunteer contributors who make Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects possible. For attendees interested in public policy advocacy work, there was plenty to take in at this global convening of free knowledge enthusiasts. Wikimania 2024, hosted by Wikimedians of the Central and Eastern Europe region and the Wikimedia Foundation, took place from 7–10 August in Katowice, Poland.

Before the conference even began, Wikimedia Foundation staff, Wikimedia affiliates, and members of the broader open movement came together at multiple events focused on advocacy. As a part of the Day Zero events in Katowice, the Global Advocacy team hosted a workshop with Wikimedians interested in public policy advocacy to share skills and knowledge related to engaging in advocacy related to the projects. The workshop also provided a forum to discuss how to coordinate campaigns on critical issues across a growing advocacy network of Wikimedians.

Collaboration was also a topic of discussion at a pre-conference side event called “Common(s) Cause: Towards a shared advocacy strategy for the Knowledge Commons.” The event, hosted by Wikimedia Europe and a number of other open movement organizations, which included Creative Commons, Open Knowledge Foundation, and the Open Future Foundation, provided an opportunity for attendees interested in advocacy to gather and create relationships to build the foundations for future advocacy work around collaborative knowledge projects like Wikipedia.

At the conference, Wikimedians were invited to learn more about the Foundation’s advocacy work in sessions focused on some of the most pressing advocacy topics today. Ricky Gaines (Human Rights Policy and Advocacy Lead) ran a workshop introducing community members to our Child Rights Impact Assessment, identifying how the volunteer community can help to implement the recommendations of the assessment. Rachel Arinii Judhistari (Lead Public Policy Specialist for Asia) and Costanza Sciubba Caniglia (Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead) organized a session in which representatives from Wikimedia Indonesia, Wikimedia France, the Yale Digital Ethic Center, and the Foundation’s Global Advocacy and Trust and Safety teams discussed information integrity during elections (watch the recording). Ziski Putz (Senior Movement Advocacy Manager) moderated a session in which members of Wikimedia Sverige, Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Chile, and Wikimedia Ukraine shared firsthand accounts of their own advocacy work, and how those efforts protect and promote the projects (watch the recording).

We are eager to see you all at the next Wikimania! In the meantime, please read more information and summary materials from the Wikimedia Day Zero Advocacy Worksop, or find out more about the “Common(s) Cause: Towards a shared advocacy strategy for the Knowledge Commons” side event. 

Celebrating a legal victory in Germany against censorship!
[Read more about the case in this blog]

An important case involving the attempted censorship of a gambling tycoon’s name on Wikipedia was resolved this summer, ultimately protecting the projects from censorship. This is an important win for the Foundation in a case that we think had all the hallmarks of an illegitimate “SLAPP” lawsuit: a strategic lawsuit against public participation, which is intended to force organizations and individuals to remain silent on legitimate matters of public interest.

The case involved a Wikipedia article that named German businessman Mladen Pavlovic as one of three co-founders of a major European gambling company. Despite the information being cited from reliable sources, and community processes existing to evaluate requests to change articles on Wikipedia, Pavlovic demanded the information be removed with threats of legal escalation. Eventually, he asked the judges of the Munich Regional Court to order the Foundation to censor Wikipedia.

On 16 November, 2023, that court ruled that the Wikimedia Foundation correctly refused to censor Pavlovic’s name in a Wikipedia article about his business. Although the case was initially appealed, the appeal was later dropped on 25 July, 2024. This led to a final judgment in favor of keeping the Wikipedia article in full!

As we see more regulation of the internet on national and international scales, it is important for regulators to also provide for strong anti-SLAPP protections that can strike these cases down early and save precious resources for nonprofit platforms like Wikipedia that operate in the public interest. 

Read more about the case and SLAPPs in this blog post.

Reflections on Open Culture Strategic Workshop
[Read Creative Commons’ blog post or watch a recording summarizing the key findings about the workshop]

In May 2024, we shared that Amalia Toledo (Lead Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean) and a number of Wikimedians were joining a strategic workshop hosted by Creative Commons. The workshop was focused on the future of open culture and Creative Commons’ initiative “Towards a Recommendation on Open Cultural Heritage (TAROCH).” The initiative is designed to encourage UNESCO to create a recommendation that represents the values of open culture by promoting open and equitable access to cultural heritage across the world.

At the workshop, participants worked on a strategy for implementation, including mapping important stakeholders and identifying opportunities to engage them. In their reflections, Creative Commons shared two main highlights from their workshop report: a shift to a narrower focus on cultural heritage in the public domain and to more flexibility in imagining the form of the final text, since there are many types of recommendations that UNESCO can make.

Read the reflections on Creative Commons’ blog post or watch a recording summarizing their key findings.

Discussing the “Wikipedia Test” on the power on / power off podcast
[Listen to the podcast on Spotify or Apple]

An August episode of technology podcast power on / power off featured an interview with Rebecca MacKinnon (Vice President of Global Advocacy), who talked about the unique challenges faced by community-led platforms and the hosts, like the Foundation, that support them.

In this episode, Rebecca discussed the issues that arise when lawmakers attempt to regulate large, for-profit social media platforms without taking into account how that will impact public interest projects like Wikipedia. She also spoke about the concept of the “Wikipedia Test,” which can be understood as follows: If lawmakers want to make sure that a law or regulation won’t cause unintended harm, they should test it out on Wikipedia. If it turns out that the regulation or law would threaten or limit the rights of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors to share and moderate content for a public interest purpose, then it will likely inflict collateral damage on a lot of other things that society generally values.

Listen to the podcast and learn about the “Wikipedia Test” on Spotify or Apple podcasts.

Protecting Wikimedia’s values
(Work related to human rights and countering disinformation)

Discussing digital rights and more at the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF)
[Find out more about the APrIGF and EngageMedia’s side event, Digital Rights Asia Pacific (DRAPAC) 2024]

Hundreds of representatives from civil society and the technology industry came together in Taipei, Taiwan, this August for two events highlighting digital rights in the Asia-Pacific region: the Asia Pacific Regional Internet Governance Forum (APrIGF), and a pre-forum event called Digital Rights Asia Pacific (DRAPAC).

The APrIGF is an important regional forum for digital rights advocates and online platforms to share their perspective on how the internet is governed now—and should be governed in the future—with representatives from governments and intergovernmental organizations like the United Nations. DRAPAC is a side event hosted by EngageMedia, a nonprofit that promotes digital rights and open and secure technology. This year, DRAPAC was supported in part by a grant from the Foundation, which also supported several Wikimedians to attend the conference.

At APrIGF, speakers from Wikimedia Taiwan and Wikimedia Indonesia joined a discussion about protecting information integrity during elections and the new challenges presented by the rapid development of generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). Rachel Arinii Judhistari (Lead Public Policy Specialist for Asia) attended both events, and she spoke at several sessions about current trends in digital rights, community-building, and safety for women and gender minorities online.

Read more about the APrIGF and Digital Rights Asia Pacific (DRAPAC) 2024, the side event hosted by EngageMedia.

Reflecting on one year of the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) in the New Federalist
[Read our op-ed about the strength of online community and the future of internet regulation]

It has been just over a year since the Digital Services Act (DSA) came into effect in the European Union (EU), a sweeping regulation that creates a series of obligations for website hosts related to their content, users, and business practices. Platforms with the largest monthly active users in the EU are designated as “Very Large Online Platforms” (VLOPs) and have additional compliance burdens to meet. Because of the significant number of European users in Wikipedia’s large global community, Wikipedia has been designated as a VLOP and is, importantly, the only VLOP hosted by a nonprofit organization that works in the public interest.

In an op-ed in the New Federalist, Jacob Rogers (Associate General Counsel) shares what we have learned in the first year of DSA compliance as a public interest nonprofit organization. This includes lessons that the European Commission can apply while moving forward to help ease compliance burdens on nonprofits, and also to shore up protections against attempts at censorship in countries with fewer protections for freedom of expression and of speech.

Wikipedia’s volunteer community has been successful in navigating the requirements set forth by the DSA, which points to the strength of our model, but meeting these standards will always require a disproportionate amount of resources and time for the Foundation and volunteers when compared to those of the world’s largest for-profit website hosts.

Jacob also shared the Foundation’s experience with lawsuits that attempt to get legitimate information in the public interest removed from Wikipedia: Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs). He cautions that since these have happened even in the EU, in countries that have fewer protections against SLAPP cases, copying regulations like the DSA without robust safeguards may be used to try to censor factual information online.

Read the full op-ed in the New Federalist for more on lessons learned.

Sharing our Child Rights Impact Assessment at CELE’s freedom of expression workshop
[Learn more about the event host, CELE, and our thoughts about the workshop]

Between 20–23 August, the Center for Studies on Freedom of Expression and Access to Information (CELE) hosted their Annual Workshop in Buenos Aires, Argentina, examining topics related to the challenges and opportunities brought about by rapid technological development as well as the ways that technology companies can self-regulate. The two-day event was a valuable opportunity to connect the dots between the work we do at the Foundation and the agendas of other Latin American organizations. Many exchanges focused on challenges to freedom of expression as well as regulatory developments and their implications at the regional and global levels.

Amalia Toledo (Lead Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean) attended the workshop on behalf of the Foundation to facilitate a discussion about our Child Rights Impact Assessment (CRIA). Amalia presented the findings of the CRIA, which was followed by a conversation about how decentralized communities like those that work on the Wikimedia projects can best go about implementing the recommendations it contains. The workshop also featured discussions on how gender, intersectionality, and Indigenous approaches can be incorporated into human rights impact assessments.

Learn more about the event host, CELE, and read our thoughts about the workshop in a post at our new LinkedIn Showcase webpage.

Announcements from our team

Join us in person and virtually for RightsCon 2025 in Taipei!
[Learn more and register for RightsCon now]

RightsCon 2025 is just around the corner and we are excited to announce that several Wikimedia-related sessions have been accepted to the official program! Rightscon, a leading summit on digital rights, will take place in Taipei, Taiwan next year, 2025, with an option to participate virtually. The program will focus on key aspects of digital rights like Artificial Intelligence (AI), governance, internet shutdowns and disruptions, and more.

The Global Advocacy team has had two sessions accepted into the program. Costanza Sciubba Caniglia (Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead) will join a roundtable with the Freedom Online Coalition to talk about the role of community-led projects in protecting the integrity of information online. Amalia Toledo (Lead Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean) will host a session bringing together speakers from the intersection of civil society and journalism, who will explore the unique challenges that marginalized groups in the Global South face when producing, circulating, and accessing journalistic content in a sustained manner.

Several Wikimedians will also take the spotlight, with members of Wikimedia Sweden and Wikimedia User Group Georgia discussing how to use open-source technology to preserve cultural heritage in times of crisis. Ceslause Ogbonnaya from the Igo Wikipedians User Group will also present a lightning talk about his experience as Wikimedian in Residence at the Africa Knowledge Initiative, which works to increase the coverage of African topics and African language on Wikipedia.

Learn more about the event and register for RightsCon now! 

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Follow us on LinkedIn or on X (formerly Twitter), visit our Meta-Wiki webpage, sign up for our quarterly newsletter to receive updates, and join our Wikipedia policy mailing list. We hope to see you there!