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

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Image collage for the September 2024 issue of ‘Don’t Blink.’ Image by the Wikimedia Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

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)

Discussing and promoting “The Power of the Commons” at the United Nations Summit of the Future
[Watch our side event “The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a More Secure, Inclusive, and Resilient World” and CEO Maryana Iskander’s Action Days plenary session remarks]

UN Member States gathered in New York this September for the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) and an official pre-event, the Summit of the Future, to discuss and vote on several important commitments related to the future of internet regulation. These commitments, embodied in a document called the “Pact for the Future,” aim to advance digital technologies in a way that enables all the world’s people to thrive.

In an opening video for the Action Days’ high-level plenary session on “securing our digital future,” Maryana Iskander (CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation) offered her thoughts about the Global Digital Compact, the annex to the Pact focused on digital governance. She shared the Wikimedia community’s hopes that the Compact will be implemented through a strong multistakeholder process and that it will encourage governments to support the communities who build Digital Public Goods (DPGs) like the Wikimedia projects.

On the same day, we also co-hosted a high-level side event at the UN titled “The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a More Secure, Inclusive, and Resilient World.” The event explored why we need to consider the whole of society when discussing how technology is shaped and governed. It featured success stories, highlighting grassroot efforts to develop community-governed public interest projects and goods, and gathered a panel of experts from government, civil society, and academia. Now that the Compact is approved, we need to think about how it will be implemented. To ensure that community work is promoted and protected on the internet, and that open knowledge can be shared freely, we need to work with governments, the private sector, and civil society to promote and protect Digital Public Goods (DPGs) and Digital Public Infrastructures (DPIs).

View the recording of our side event The Power of the Commons: Digital Public Goods for a More Secure, Inclusive, and Resilient World and CEO Maryana Iskander’s Action Days plenary session remarks. For those interested in the lessons learned from the campaign that Wikimedia affiliates and the Foundation launched to include our proposed commitments in the Compact, check out this slide deck on Wikimedia Commons.

Wikimedians set policy priorities at the Big Fat Brussels Meeting

[Read Wikimedia Europe’s blog post about the event]

Wikimedians from chapters across Europe gathered once again for the Big Fat Brussels Meeting, where they discussed the most pressing legal and policy issues for the Wikimedia projects in Europe. Joining them from the Global Advocacy team were Rebecca MacKinnon (Vice President of Global Advocacy), Costanza Sciubba Caniglia (Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead) and Ricky Gaines (Human Rights Policy and Advocacy Lead).

The meeting covered topics related to existing and upcoming legislative reforms across the European Union (EU) like child safety online and artificial intelligence, and participants were able to take part in trainings on advocacy topics like communication and planning. Other discussions focused on how to address lawsuits that seek to censor civil society projects like Wikipedia, as we saw in our recent court victory in Germany. The event also featured a visit to the European Parliament to present findings from a study on disinformation on different language versions of Wikipedia, followed by a meeting with parliamentary staffers. At the Parliament, Costanza was part of a panel presenting a new research project led by Wikimedia Europe, EMIF, the University of Amsterdam, and Eurecat – Centre Tecnològic de Catalunya, to study Wikipedia in the 2024 EU Elections.

As Ricky reflected:

“The gathering came at an important time for Wikimedians in the EU. The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) has been in force for one year and recent elections for the EU parliament have shaken up the political landscape in Europe. Engaging constructively with EU institutions is critical for advancing free knowledge in Europe, and the Big Fat Brussels Meeting allowed us to begin thinking strategically as a group about how to best advance this mission.”

Find out more in Wikimedia Europe’s blog post about the event.

Reflecting on the anniversary of the EU’s Digital Service Act (DSA)
[Read an interview with Wired Italia and find more reflections in our op-ed at The New Federalist last month]

As we approach the anniversary of the EU DSA coming into force, the Wikimedia Foundation reflected on how its implementation has impacted the Wikimedia projects and the broader online information ecosystem.

In Wired Italia, Rebecca MacKinnon discusses the unique position of the Foundation in regards to the DSA: the only nonprofit host of a website designated as a “Very Large Online Platform” (VLOP). Being a VLOP demands that the host follow the most stringent requirements of the DSA. Rebecca explained that while the Foundation generally agrees with the promises of the DSA and did not contest its VLOP status, the burdens of compliance with the regulation are significant for our public interest organization’s small legal team. Respect and support in the DSA for community governance as in the case of the Wikimedia projects has, however, been vital in lessening that burden and ensuring the continued survival of the Wikimedia model in this new regulatory world. She warned that as more legal frameworks like the DSA are considered elsewhere, policymakers should consider the “Wikipedia Test,” which asks if a law or regulation will protect or harm online communities like the ones that run Wikipedia and other public interest projects.

Read Rebecca’s interview with Wired Italia (in Italian) and read the op-ed that Jacob Rogers (Associate General Counsel) published in The New Federalist.

Contributing to European Commission’s Consultation “Future-Proof AI Act: Trustworthy General-Purpose AI”

[Learn more about the EU AI Act and about our prior submissions to consultations about AI]

As legislators across the globe grow increasingly interested in passing laws and regulations to shape the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI), the Foundation has provided input to several official consultations worldwide to ensure legislation takes into account the perspective of public interest projects like Wikipedia. Most recently, we contributed to a consultation on the implementation of the European Union’s AI Act, which seeks to address a number of potential risks posed by AI development by imposing rules about how these technologies are both developed and used. 

The consultation focused on general-purpose AI, and we shared best practices that could be undertaken by providers of general-purpose AI models to meet the standards set out in the EU AI Act. Our recommendations include committing to provide attribution to the sources in AI outputs, including honoring any conditions required by open licenses on source content and providing enough information about the process of building a training database for a model that it can be replicated by researchers. These practices are important for ensuring that AI models support the data sources, like Wikipedia, which they use for training while also providing adequate transparency around their input sources to allow better scrutiny.

Find out more about the EU AI Act, and read about our prior submissions to AI consultations worldwide.

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

Discussing free expression and fair elections at the Future of Speech Online (FOSO) conference
[Watch the panel on Youtube]

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and Stand Together Trust hosted their annual Future of Speech Online (FOSO) conference from 16–17 September. The conference gathered policymakers, campaigners, and experts across the fields of law, elections, public policy, and technology to discuss important policy topics related to the over 60 elections that will take place worldwide before this year ends. Conversations at the conference focused on how to protect free and fair elections by ensuring voters are getting truthful information and also by upholding human rights like freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.

Costanza Sciubba Caniglia (Anti-Disinformation Strategy Lead) joined a panel with representatives from WITNESS and Internet Sans Frontières, which are community-based projects focused on sharing knowledge online. The panelists shared their perspective on how to build these types of trustworthy spaces online without making the intermediaries who host these platforms—like the Foundation—the ultimate decision makers about what is truthful and what is not. Costanza explained how the infrastructure of Wikipedia, with policies shaped and enforced by volunteers, helps to encourage the reliability and integrity of the information on that Wikimedia project. She argued that this reliability has a ripple effect, because the data on Wikipedia supports a broader internet ecosystem of search engines, digital assistants, and large language models (LLMs).

You can watch the panel on YouTube, and find recordings and transcripts from both days of the conference on the CDT’s conference webpage.

Wikimedians share successes and public policy priorities at digital rights Global Gathering event
[Read more about the Global Gathering

The annual Global Gathering event—formerly the Internet Freedom Festival—brought together participants who work on digital rights for several days of discussion and making connections in Estoril, Portugal. Local Wikimedians Jorge Gomes of Wikimedia Portugal and Ana Bragança from Wiki Editoras Lx joined Global Advocacy’s Ricky Gaines (Human Rights Policy and Advocacy Lead) to host a booth at the event, which featured stories about how Wikimedians work to make the internet a more equitable place.

At the booth, Jorge and Ana shared their experiences editing Wikipedia and growing their communities in Portugal, including the important work Wiki Editoras Lx is doing to close the gender gap on the Portuguese version of Wikipedia. Attendees could also learn about the Foundation’s public policy and advocacy priorities more generally and our work engaging global governments to uphold free expression, privacy, and transparency online.

Read more about the Global Gathering.

Discussing elections at the “Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy” book launch
[Watch a recording of the event on YouTube]

This month, Costanza Sciubba Caniglia moderated a panel at Columbia University as a part of the launch of the book “Disinformation, Misinformation, and Democracy: Legal Approaches in Comparative Context”—edited by Ronald J. Krotoszynski Jr., András Koltay, and Charlotte Garden. This book brings together legal scholars from across the world to explore examples of the issue of false and misleading information online, and potential measures to address it without infringing upon democratic values like free political speech. Other topics explored in the book include proposals for government regulation, media self-regulation, and the role of civil society.

At the event, Costanza hosted a panel focused on what social groups and civil society institutions can do to address misinformation and disinformation around elections. Some of the approaches and actions include: public regulation of large private online companies; strategic litigation; and, greater protections for unions of knowledge workers, educators, and scientists. The panel also touched on the topic of journalistic content being used to train large language models (LLMs) and AI, and the potential interruptions of revenue for journalism that may result from that.

Watch a full recording of the event on YouTube.

Announcements from our team

The fourth Global Advocacy newsletter is out! 

In this most recent issue, we look closely at our activities at the United Nations ahead of, and during, the UN General Assembly and Summit for the Future. We also share news about an encouraging US Supreme Court ruling focused on state laws limiting social media platforms’ ability to moderate content, information about how Wikipedia editors are working to counter disinformation in this important year for elections across the globe, and a summary of the efforts of Wikimedia affiliates and the Foundation to address public policy advocacy challenges at the first global meetup on these issues as well as at Wikimania 2024.

Read the latest issue of our newsletter, and sign up to receive the next one!

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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!

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