Wikimedia Foundation Policy

Hello, and nice to meet you! 👋 We are the Global Advocacy team at the Wikimedia Foundation: a mix of regional policy and human rights, anti-disinformation, communications, and community-organizing experts. Our mission is to help reach the Foundation's vision of a world where everyone, everywhere, can safely create and share knowledge without fear of consequence or barriers to access. 🌐 In this space, we will share our work to promote and protect public policies, laws, and regulations that support the right to access free and open, reliable and accurate knowledge. Get to know our team: https://w.wiki/AxLu! We look forward to seeing you around!

🚨 We are worried about the decision of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court on liability rules for the removal of content on digital platforms. 🚨 Internet companies, including other platform hosts, have warned in a statement that “the future of the internet in Brazil and fundamental values are at stake”: https://lnkd.in/e4mWY3Rq The Wikimedia Foundation also believes that modifying liability rules with the declaration of unconstitutionality of article 19 of the Marco Civil da Internet could: ⚠️ Represent a devastating blow to community-driven models of information sharing and content moderation. Wikipedia, as we know it, could not exist, since volunteer communities would be unable to establish and enforce content standards if the Foundation was liable for every edit or upload or edit; ⚠️ Limit individuals’ capacity to exercise their free speech by actively participating in the creation and development of collaborative information-sharing projects; ⚠️ Create a climate of legal uncertainty, leading to a surge in lawsuits against small and/or nonprofit platforms hosts such as the Foundation. The financial burden of defending against these lawsuits could devastate organizations like ours; ⚠️ Severely limit our ability to provide equal access to information for everyone, regardless of their circumstances, which weakens public discourse and harms society as a whole. Like the organizations that published the statement, we are deeply concerned about the potential impacts of the proposed changes to the Marco Civil da Internet. We advocate a model that ensures a free, diverse, and inclusive digital environment for all Brazilians. 🌎🌐

🚨 Estamos preocupados com a decisão do Supremo Tribunal Federal do Brasil sobre as regras de responsabilização de terceiros pela remoção de conteúdo em plataformas digitais. 🚨 Empresas de Internet, entre outros hosts de plataforma, alertaram em um comunicado que “o futuro da Internet no Brasil e os valores fundamentais estão em jogo”: https://lnkd.in/e4mWY3Rq A Wikimedia Foundation também acredita que a modificação das regras de responsabilidade com a declaração de inconstitucionalidade do artigo 19 do Marco Civil poderia: ⚠️ Representar um golpe devastador nos modelos comunitários de compartilhamento de informações e moderação de conteúdo. A Wikipedia como a conhecemos não poderia existir, pois as comunidades de voluntários não conseguiriam estabelecer e aplicar padrões de conteúdo se a Fundação fosse responsável por cada upload ou edição; ⚠️ Limitar a capacidade dos indivíduos de exercer sua liberdade de expressão e de participar ativamente da criação e do desenvolvimento de projetos colaborativos de compartilhamento de informações; ⚠️ Criar um clima de incerteza jurídica, levando a um aumento de ações judiciais contra hosts de plataformas pequenas e/ou sem fins lucrativos, como a Fundação. O ônus financeiro da defesa contra essas ações judiciais poderia devastar organizações como a nossa; ⚠️ Limitar severamente nossa capacidade de fornecer acesso igualitário à informação para todas as pessoas, independentemente de suas circunstâncias, o que enfraquece o discurso público e prejudica a sociedade como um todo. Assim como as organizações que publicaram a declaração, estamos profundamente preocupados com os possíveis impactos das mudanças propostas ao Marco Civil da Internet. Defendemos um modelo que garanta um ambiente digital livre, diversificado e inclusivo para todos os brasileiros. 🌎🌐

Really looking forward to the workshop later on this week—and sharing how the Wikimedia model addresses online content moderation, information integrity, and disinformation! If you're near Munich and interested in attending, be sure to check the post for details.

Our Director of Media Freedom Programmes, Will Church, chaired an important panel discussion at a workshop in Geneva today, jointly hosted by the UK Mission Geneva, OHCHR, and the Commonwealth Small States Office. The session brought together distinguished speakers, including H.E. Mrs. Riia Salsa-Audiffren, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Estonia to the UN in Geneva, alongside Fiona Crack, Deputy Director of BBC Global News, Iain Levine, Director for Human Rights Policy at Meta, and Rebecca MacKinnon, VP of Global Advocacy at Wikimedia Foundation. Discussions focused on best practices for protecting media freedom in the digital space, strategies to combat online harm, and effective responses to restrictions on freedom of expression. The panel also explored solutions to tackle disinformation and its impact on human rights.

Alongside the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Commonwealth Small States Office, the UK was thrilled to co-host today’s workshop... ⭐️ Implementing Human Rights Objectives through the Global Digital Compact ⭐️ It was a pleasure to convene tech, #digital and human rights experts from across the globe. Many thanks to our stellar line-up of speakers for sharing their insights on the #GDC and #humanrights, and huge thanks to all our attendees for joining us and taking part in these important discussions.

I was honored to have been invited to deliver the opening keynote at this year’s International Digital Dialogues conference in Berlin. In the age of AI we must remember that real knowledge that serves humanity must come from humans. The people who report and share knowledge must be supported and protected!

💡 “Why community governed digital public goods must be protected and supported” ➡️ Die Eröffnungs-Keynote der International Digital Dialogues hielt dieses Rebecca MacKinnon, Vice President, Global Advocacy der Wikimedia Foundation. 🙌 Damit setzt das Bundesministerium für Digitales und Verkehr ein wichtiges Zeichen für die globale Bedeutung von faktenbasierten, freien Informationsquellen und communitybasierten Wissensprojekten! #Wikipedia 🌎 Mit Unterstützung der Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH dienen die #DigitalDialoge als Plattform für Regierungen und Akteure, um gemeinsam globale Rahmenbedingungen für die Digitalisierung zu gestalten. Dr. Friederike von Franqué Wikimedia Foundation Policy #ÖGÖG #publicmoneypublicgood #freeknowledge

📣 Join Us for the 3rd Edition of the Facilitating Constructive Dialogue Workshop 🗓 December 5th, 1:00 pm - 7:30 pm & December 6th, 9:00 am - 2:30 pm 📍 TUM Think Tank 📩 Invitation only. We’d love to hear from you! Send us an email if you'd like to join ([email protected]) We're bringing together experts and stakeholders from academia, civil society, the public sector, and industry to address two critical questions in the fight against toxic online speech: 1️⃣  What do we know about the challenges of hate speech and mis- and disinformation online, and how can we best approach them? 2️⃣ What do we know about effective solutions, strategies, and tools to combat these issues? Over the course of a two-day event, we'll explore these questions and work together to develop actionable insights for building healthier online spaces. 👉 If you’re interested in joining us, we’d love to hear from you! Please send a brief email sharing your background and your motivation for getting involved at: [email protected] 🤝 In collaboration with the Bayerische Landeszentrale für neue Medien, the Bavarian State Ministry of Justice (StMJ), Das NETTZ, ISD Germany, the Bavarian Research Institute for Digital Transformation, and the Content Moderation Lab at the TUM Think Tank. ➕ For more information and the official program, visit our website: https://lnkd.in/dBmkZ5C5 Yannis Theocharis, Markus B. Siewert, Sina Laubenstein Medina, Friederike Quint, Amos Wasserbach, Lena-Maria Böswald, Dr. Christoph Egle, Andreas Wenninger, Spyros Kosmidis, Joshua Tucker, Jeffrey Howard, Vinzent Ellissen, Meldestelle REspect!, Fernanda Sauca, Dr. Miguelángel Verde Garrido, Simon Stacheter, Guenter Bressau Hochschule für Politik München, TUM School of Social Sciences and Technology, Technical University of Munich, Bayerisches Staatsministerium für Digitales, Wikimedia Foundation Policy

The United Nations Convention Against Cybercrime, currently lacking effective human rights safeguards to prevent abuses of sweeping powers, raises concerns for Wikimedia volunteers and the Wikimedia Foundation. The Convention would give abusive regimes the facade of an international treaty to cover their acts of transnational repression. We urge UN Member States to oppose this treaty in its current form.