“Don’t Blink”: Protecting the Wikimedia model, its people, and its values in July 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, X (formerly Twitter), and Bluesky; and, sign up for our quarterly newsletter or Wikimedia public policy mailing list.

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Vote for Wikimedia Foundation sessions in the South by Southwest (SXSW) Panel Picker!
[Read about our proposed panels on Journalism and AI, 25 Years of Creative Commons, and Cutting-Edge AI Policy and vote for them]

South by Southwest (SXSW) brings together the voices of experts, industry, and civil society to discuss issues at the cutting edge of technology and public policy. The SXSW Panel Picker allows the public to choose the lineup for SXSW 2026 with their vote! At SXSW 2025, we joined several sessions to talk about digital rights and artificial intelligence, and we co-hosted an event with Creative Commons focused on the role of open culture in the future of technology and society. Wikimedians even got in on the fun, hosting a weeklong WikiHaus with Creative Commons-licensed photoshoots and lightning talks.

If you want to see more of Wikimedia at this future-focused conference, vote for our three sessions on SXSW’s Panel Picker: 

• Will Journalism Survive AI – and Does it Matter? – featuring Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia founder)
• 25 Years of Creative Commons: Insights & Reflections – featuring Lane Becker (President of Wikimedia Enterprise)
• Cutting-Edge AI Policy: What to Know & What’s Next – featuring Tajh Taylor (Special Advisor to the Chief Product and Technology Officer at the Wikimedia Foundation)

Asking who decides the future of the internet at WikiCon Brasil … and why it’s you!
[Learn more about this year’s WikiCon Brasil]

The second edition of WikiCon BraSil took place from 19-20 July, connecting Wikimedians from across the country and region to build community and share ideas. The theme was “Strengthening Digital Public Goods,” and the conference featured panels and presentations on internet governance, information integrity, open access to information, and more. This theme is especially relevant because this year Wikipedia was officially recognized as a digital public good: open-source software, data, models, standards, or content created for the public interest and that help to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Amalia Toledo (Lead Policy Specialist for Latin America and the Caribbean) joined the conference to lead a session titled “Quem decide o futuro da Internet (e por que você)?” (in English, “Who decides the future of the Internet [and why you]?”). This session focused on teaching volunteer contributors how to engage in internet governance conversations in Brazil. Amalia provided information for attendees about the stakeholders involved in internet governance, the Foundation’s priorities, and the discussion forums where they could participate to share their perspectives as Wikimedians and individuals producing free and open knowledge.

Wikimedians are in a strong position to advocate the interests of community-led, public interest projects online based on their personal experiences, and this was an exciting opportunity to help them make connections and plan concrete steps for getting involved in their country’s internet policy discussions.

Learn more about this year’s WikiCon Brasil.

China blocks Wikimedia Foundation as permanent observer to the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
[Read our Foundation statement about the decision]

For the fifth time, the Wikimedia Foundation was denied permanent observer status at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)—the specialized agency within the United Nations (UN) that shapes global intellectual property policies—due to opposition from China. This veto excludes a global community of 260,000 volunteer contributors and billions of readers of Wikipedia from issues that directly affect them, including important discussions and decisions about copyright and open access. This year, Wikipedia was recognized as a digital public good for its contributions toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs); it is also a critical source for training data for artificial intelligence systems. The Foundation’s perspective and experience hosting Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are essential to ensuring that global copyright policy reflects the public interest. China’s opposition is based on a misrepresentation of Wikipedia’s volunteer-driven policies and practices, all of which are rooted in accuracy and neutrality.

We are disappointed in this outcome, having long taken part in activities related to the work of the United Nations. The Foundation is already a recognized observer at the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) since 2022, and has contributed to shaping the Global Digital Compact, an important UN instrument that will influence the future of internet regulation for years to come.

We urge WIPO Member States and leadership to help resolve this political impasse, so we can offer them our expertise in employing open copyright licenses to promote both innovation and equitable access to information in addition to other matters related to intellectual property. Until then, we will continue to pursue accreditation and represent the volunteer communities and public interest projects that make free and open knowledge possible, as well as the readers who use them to improve their lives and participation in societies worldwide.

Read our Foundation statement for more about the decision.

Webinars invite Wikimedians and allied organizations to imagine how they can use the Wikipedia Test in their own advocacy work 
[Read our Diff blog post about the Wikipedia Test]

In June 2025, we launched the Wikipedia Test, a tool for policy advocates and regulators to consider how new laws might negatively affect online spaces, tools, and resources developed in the public interest. The Wikipedia Test uses Wikipedia as an example of the type of community-driven, public interest website that lawmakers might overlook when attempting to hold powerful, for-profit platforms accountable for the harms they cause. We’ve found that if a policy threatens Wikipedia, it often signals harm to other similar platforms—from citizen journalism websites like Global Voices to civic tech projects like FixMyStreet and open data repositories used in climate science and public health.

We hope that the Wikipedia Test can be used by everyone: from the Wikimedia community to regulators to allies as a call to action that starts conversations and shows how regulations might impact these less considered, but absolutely vital, parts of the internet we love the most. This is why we held two webinars for anyone interested in learning how to use the Wikipedia Test in their own advocacy work. 

If you are interested in using the Wikipedia Test for your own policy analyses, recommendations, and advocacy, you can learn more on the Foundation website. Like everything that is wiki, please feel free to download, share, and reuse the visual assets we used for the Wikipedia Test, which are available at Wikimedia Commons. 

Discussing the EU’s Digital Services Act at the European Rights and Risks Forum
[Read the Global Network Initiative and Digital Trust and Safety Partnership’s summary report]

The Global Network Initiative (GNI) and the Digital Trust and Safety Partnership (DSTP) recently co-hosted their annual European Rights and Risks Forum. The Forum gathers civil society, academics, investors, and very large online platforms and search engines (respectively, VLOPs and VLOSEs) subject to the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), where they discussed stakeholders’ experiences with producing risk assessments as required by the DSA and lessons learned. 

Ricky Gaines (Human Rights Policy and Advocacy Lead) and Phil Bradley-Schmieg (Lead Counsel) shared the Wikimedia Foundation’s unique experiences supporting Wikipedia—the only nonprofit platform designated as a VLOP—to comply with the additional requirements those platforms face under the law. Ricky and Phil discussed complying with the additional requirements VLOPs and VLOSEs face under the DSA and how regulations can have outsized effects on nonprofit platforms. They also explained being faced with further complications, such as national laws that may have additional or conflicting requirements (like the UK OSA) as well as less staff and resources to put toward compliance. Lastly, they shared their experience working with the volunteer community to understand and provide feedback around Wikipedia’s risk assessments, and shared how this practice could help other VLOPs to better collaborate with their communities to understand risk on their platforms.

During a session focused on search engines and knowledge platforms like Wikipedia, stakeholders from these categories discussed how important it is that, given the intended purpose of these platforms, these platforms consider the manners in which they might affect rights like freedom of expression and access to reliable information. Ricky and Phil highlighted how sometimes risks can cross over between platforms—for example, when a search engine delists a Wikipedia webpage based on a claim under the right to be forgotten—and addressed how this should be handled in risk assessments.

Read the summary report that GNI and DSTP published for more takeaways from the event.

Defending free speech with amicus briefs in two United States court cases
[Read our blog posts about Patterson v. Meta and NetChoice v. Brown]

This July, we published blog posts about two amicus (or friend-of-the-court) briefs we co-signed in separate United States appellate court cases. The lawsuits focus on content regulation and on free speech.

In Patterson v. Meta, a case currently in appellate court in the state of New York, we joined a brief with the Chamber of Progress and the Engine Advocacy to correct what we believe is a misinterpretation of the fundamental liability protections under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA), intended to encourage free speech online. The case is related to the livestreaming of a racially motivated mass shooting that took place in Buffalo. The plaintiffs argued that social media platforms should be treated as products, and the failure to prevent this kind of livestreaming should be treated as a product defect. If the appellate court rules in favor of this argument, it could create the potential for even non-social media platforms to be sued for anything posted by their users. This could potentially open the Wikimedia Foundation up to a number of lawsuits as the host of the Wikimedia projects. The community-led Wikimedia model is one where hundreds of thousands of volunteers create, maintain, and update content, so the Foundation could be potentially liable for every edit, upload, and deletion. Consequently, we argued that Section 230’s liability protections should apply in this case and that the product defect argument should be dismissed.

In NetChoice v. Brown, we joined a challenge to a law in the state of Utah called the Utah Minor Protection in Social Media Act. The Act requires social media platforms to disable some features on minors’ accounts and to put in place age verification measures for people accessing the internet from Utah. We have pushed back on age verification requirements in other regulations like the UK Online Safety Act because they would require us to collect information about our users (i.e., their age) that we do not already collect, infringing upon their privacy rights. Beyond age verification, the Utah law establishes content restrictions that would be incredibly challenging for public interest platforms to implement. We argued with the Organization for Transformative Works, the Chamber of Progress, and the Engine Advocacy that these restrictions would infringe upon free speech rights. The Utah law would require platforms to adopt a hands-on editorial model to ensure compliance with the law’s strict content restrictions for minors. For these reasons, we urged the court to continue blocking this law in order to protect freedom of speech and collaborative knowledge sharing for everyone online.

Learn more in our blog posts about Patterson v. Meta and Netchoice v. Brown.

Sharing how to support communities and build digital inclusion at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS+20) High-Level Event
[Watch the recordings of our sessions about multistakeholder engagement and corporate accountability]

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Tunis meetings of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS): a landmark gathering sponsored by the UN that established a framework for global digital cooperation. The WSIS framework laid out a vision to build people-centered, inclusive, and development-oriented information and knowledge societies. To mark the anniversary, stakeholders from across the globe met once again as a part of the UN’s 20-year review (WSIS+20). They discussed what has changed since 2005, evaluated the progress that has been made toward the framework’s goals, and identified opportunities to continue building inclusive technologies and spaces online. The review process will take place over the course of 2025 and lead to an intergovernmental negotiation process to adopt an outcome document at the UN General Assembly (UNGA) in December 2025.

Jan Gerlach (Director of Public Policy) joined this year’s high-level event to share Wikimedia’s perspective as a global community-led, public interest knowledge sharing project. In a session focused on multistakeholder cooperation, Jan explained how to better support the communities who build open knowledge projects in the age of artificial intelligence. Jan also joined a session to talk about corporate accountability in relation to the Global Digital Compact, which calls for digital technology companies to develop accountability frameworks based on stakeholder conversations. At this session, he discussed how companies can resist increasing pressure to leave civil society out of discussions around internet governance, and advocated the importance of including Wikimedia’s community-led, decentralized governance perspective in these conversations.

Watch the recordings of our sessions about multistakeholder engagement and corporate accountability.

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