“Don’t Blink”: Protecting the Wikimedia model, its people, and its values in February 2025

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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Big wins in advancing our positive vision of the internet

Protecting Wikimedia projects and volunteers from “forum shopping” in Germany
[Read our blog post about the legal victory]

The Foundation has won an important legal victory in Germany, setting a precedent that will help protect Wikimedia projects and volunteers from opportunistic lawsuits. In this case, Shoaib Ahmed Shaikh, a wealthy and influential Pakistani citizen, tried to sue the Foundation in Germany to take advantage of its defamation laws, which tend to favor the party filing the lawsuit. This was the latest in a series of legal threats that Shaikh has made in multiple countries against the Foundation related to content on Wikipedia about him and companies with which he is associated. “Forum shopping” is the practice of filing lawsuits in countries where the laws or procedures benefit the plaintiff or disadvantage those defending against the lawsuit, regardless of where the actual alleged harm occurred. 

Shaikh went to great lengths to claim jurisdiction in Germany after the Foundation disagreed with his legal demands and a cease and desist letter sent by the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority. Shaikh rented an office and hired a law firm in Germany to sue the Foundation. Fortunately, his arguments failed and his case was dismissed. 

This is a significant ruling that will protect Wikipedia volunteers and the Wikimedia Foundation from lawsuits that attempt to exploit favorable laws to control content on the Wikimedia projects. Because defending against lawsuits, even clearly baseless ones, takes a lot of time and money from the Foundation, rulings like this help send the message that Wikipedia’s availability globally does not mean that people who are unhappy with Wikipedia’s content can sue in any country in the world.

Learn more in our blog post about the legal victory.

Celebrating Wikipedia’s addition to the Digital Public Goods Alliance’s (DPGA) DPG Registry
[Read our press release or learn more about how digital public goods fit into our positive vision of the internet]

In February, we were thrilled to announce that Wikipedia was recognized as a digital public good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance and added to their DPG Registry. This is an important recognition of the value of Wikipedia to the public interest, and of the hard work that Wikimedians put in every day to share free and open knowledge with the world. 

To celebrate, we shared a blog post about how digital public goods, along with digital commons and the public domain, fit into our positive vision of the internet. We explained how protecting public interest projects is important to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are benchmarks for human advancement and flourishing. We also shared the work we have been doing to promote digital public goods and the public domain through advocacy at the United Nations and language preservation initiatives on the Wikimedia projects. These advocacy efforts will only be strengthened by Wikipedia being added to the DPG Registry. 

In an article in Tech Princess discussing the recognition, Alessio Melandri (President, Wikimedia Italy) shared how this designation reflects the value of Wikimedian’s commitment to promoting and defending open and free knowledge.

Read our press release or learn more about how digital public goods fit into our positive vision of the internet.

Making connections to protect public interest internet

Promoting the public interest at events around the world: Knowledge for everyone, everywhere 

In February, Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimedia volunteers joined several events around the world to share our positive vision for the internet. They discussed how to better support public interest projects like Wikipedia in a world where new technologies change how people receive information and new regulations threaten the Wikimedia projects’ community-led governance model.

At RightsCon 2025, held in Taipei, Taiwan, Foundation staff and volunteers spoke at several sessions exploring topics from sustainability in journalism to the preservation of Indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage. The Foundation also hosted a booth at the conference’s Community Village, which provided a space for attendees to learn more about affiliates’ work, and to test out a new policy analysis tool we are developing called the Wikipedia Test. Participants from across civil society were invited to play a card game where they matched potential new internet regulations with the unforeseen consequences they may have for public interest platforms like Wikipedia—which serves to illustrate how lawmakers should consider these far-reaching impacts when drafting new regulations.

Wikimedia Foundation booth at RightsCon 2025 in Taipei, Taiwan, featuring a prototype Wikipedia Test.
Image by Wikimedia Foundation, CC0 1.0 Universal, via Wikimedia Commons.

The topic of regulatory impacts on Wikipedia also came up when several Global Advocacy members joined State of the Net in Washington, DC, an annual conference focused on technology policy. At the event, several panelists from Common Sense Media, the Family Online Safety Institute, and LGBT Tech highlighted that laws targeting large social media platforms can have unintended consequences on public interest platforms like Wikipedia. 

In San Francisco, WikiCredCon drew participants from across the free knowledge movement to talk about promoting credibility within the Wikimedia projects’ ecosystem. Hosted at the Internet Archive in San Francisco, the convention invited volunteers, industry, and academics to share their experiences maintaining reliable, high-quality information and citations on the projects, ranging from building credibility tools to dealing with coordinated harassment campaigns. Wikimedia Argentina also joined to highlight the challenges they experienced working with journalists to promote information integrity during Argentina’s electoral process. 

Finally, Jan Gerlach (Public Policy Director) spoke on a panel at the launch of the Public Interest AI Initiative to discuss how the Foundation engages with its community of volunteers and why we should support digital public goods, which include certain applications of artificial intelligence (AI). The Public Interest AI Initiative, located within the TUM Think Tank at the Technical University of Munich, supports AI projects for the public good through mapping AI policy recommendations and frameworks, developing a repository of public interest AI projects, and developing new financing mechanisms to support this work. 

Defending human rights in the free knowledge ecosystem

Leading a workshop on human rights and the internet at TEDIC’s Human Rights and Technology Bootcamp
[Learn more about TEDIC]

For two weeks in February, TEDIC—a Paraguayan non-governmental organization (NGO) focused on human rights and gender inequality in digital environments—hosted its “Human Rights and Technology” Bootcamp in partnership with Amnesty International Paraguay. The bootcamp brought together a small group of activists and human rights defenders from Paraguay and elsewhere to learn about and explore the intersection of human rights and technology. 

Amalia Toledo (Lead Lead Public Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean) was invited to lead part of a module at the bootcamp about the right to freedom of expression and association. In the module, she explained how Wikipedia’s community-led model differs from other large online platforms, which employ a more top-down approach to moderation. She also led a discussion on legal developments in the region, and encouraged the participants to think about how protecting public interest projects like Wikipedia connects with their work defending human rights. 

Discussing the impact of censorship at Knight Media Forum 2025
[Watch the panel on Youtube]

Maryana Iskander (CEO, Wikimedia Foundation) joined a panel at the Knight Media Forum 2025 that focused on the chilling effect of censorship on people’s behavior both online and offline. Chilling effects are changes in the behavior or speech of individuals and institutions—often by refraining from either—based on intrusions on human rights like freedom of expression or privacy. The panel gathered experts from libraries, universities, and arts advocacy organizations to speak on the challenges they have faced with censorship in their fields, and also the impact that it has on their practices in a world that is increasingly polarized and hostile to free expression.

In her remarks, Maryana shared what helps Wikipedia stand the test of time despite changing legal regimes and threats. She highlighted that Wikipedia’s reliability over time is largely due to the fact that it is an encyclopedia where content is written from a neutral point of view and based on reliable sources. She also praised Wikimedia volunteers’s humility, pointing out that those contributing to the projects do so in good faith and are willing to both admit when they have made mistakes and correct those mistakes. 

Finally, Maryana discussed how leadership in cultural institutions should take the long view even while battling immediate crises, and adapt to the new ways in which knowledge is being created and shared. Addressing generative artificial intelligence, she emphasized how we can evolve with the technology to ensure that humans remain in the loop of knowledge production.

Watch the full conversation on YouTube.

Joining civil society to object to dismissals from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB)
[Read our joint open letter]

The Foundation joined the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) and 26 other civil society organizations in issuing a letter to leadership in the US Congress that condemns the firing of three members of the PCLOB—an independent agency within the US executive branch that has provided critical oversight over the country’s surveillance activities since it was proposed by the 9-11 Commission in 2004.

The PCLOB has debunked false claims about mass surveillance programs, prompted declassification of key facts about surveillance secrets, and encouraged important legislative reforms. In the letter, we call for a restoration of the PCLOB’s independence, highlighting how that independence is crucial for the board to exercise its oversight function. The letter also asks Congress to increase its own oversight activities regarding surveillance given this harm to the PCLOB’s independence. 

Our support for this letter is the latest in our long history of standing up for the rights of people who read or contribute to the Wikimedia projects against surveillance and other privacy violations, including our litigation against the National Security Agency to challenge its mass surveillance program.

Read our joint open letter.

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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!