“Don’t Blink”: Protecting the Wikimedia model, its people, and its values in July 2026

Welcome to “Don’t Blink”! Every month we share public policy 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 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: follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Bluesky; sign up for our quarterly newsletter or Wikimedia public policy mailing list; and visit our Meta-Wiki webpage. ________ Understanding online age verification and its impact on the Wikimedia projects Over the past several years, lawmakers around the world have been passing a wide variety of legislation and regulations aimed to make using the internet safer for children. These laws differ in the kinds of platforms they target, the age ranges they intend to protect, and whether they apply to specific content, entire platforms, or even to devices. What they share in common, however, is the idea that minors should, in some way, have a different experience online than adults, whether that includes restricting access to certain features or types of content or banning them completely from using certain types of websites and services like social media. This practice, called age gating, relies on a website or service host identifying and verifying the age of its users through a process called age verification. Age verification typically requires that a user, regardless of age, show a government ID and submit to a facial scan to prove that the ID is theirs. In fact, you may have already seen some of these requirements popping up on websites you use every day or have read headlines about users’ personally identifiable information (PII) being stolen. While the effectiveness of these laws remains to be seen, the Wikimedia Foundation has been raising concerns about how versions of these laws can impact important human rights like privacy, freedom of expression, and access to reliable information, as well as advocating that these laws be narrowly tailored to address some of the riskiest websites and services online. Explaining the basics of online age verification [Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of our explainer blog post series] To provide context on this complicated legal and technical shift in internet policy, the Foundation published a three-part blog series, which explains the history of age-based restrictions online, basic concepts and technological measures of age verification, and the specific types of laws repeated across many different government initiatives. In Part 1, we take you through an internet policy timeline, which explores how age verification and its various requirements to show different content depending on the users’ age have evolved over time. We also shed light on why the trend of child safety online has escalated the calls for age verification in recent years. In Part 2, we spell out the meaning of terms related to age verification and explain the technical processes behind complying with age verification laws. We also highlight how age gating on public interest educational content like the Wikimedia projects could impact the human rights of Wikimedia users, especially those of minors. In Part 3, we discuss the specifics of the types of platforms and content that these laws typically target, and highlight some of the public policy advocacy work we have done in the form of “friend-of-the-court” briefs related to challenges to certain state laws requiring age verification in the United States. If you want to be informed about the recent developments around age verification regulations, as well as the potential effects these developments might have on your rights and freedoms online, this blog post series is a great place to start learning more. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of our online age verification explainer blog post series. Contributing to a public consultation on the Brazil’s ECA Digital child safety regulation [Learn more about our response in our blog post] As we shared early this year, Brazil has joined the global conversation around child safety and age verification online by passing the Digital Statute of the Child and Adolescent (ECA Digital). The ECA Digital established a new framework for protecting minors in digital environments, and included a sweeping requirement that app stores and certain online platforms implement age verification mechanisms to show only content deemed appropriate for minors given their age. During the drafting of the law’s regulations, we submitted comments urging the Brazilian authorities to customize the application of these regulations proportionally to a platform’s risk level, and to consider an interpretation of the law that would exempt digital public goods entirely from the age verification requirements in order to protect crucial rights like freedom of expression and access to reliable information on the internet. In July 2026, we responded to another public consultation: Brazil’s National Data Protection Authority (ANPD) solicited comments on their proposed guidelines about how to conduct age verification. In our submission, we explained that because the draft guidelines were too broad in their definition of social media, they could potentially end up capturing digital public goods like open-source software repositories, citizen science portals, and collaborative encyclopedic platforms such as Wikipedia as well. Addressing this overbroad definition is important because, under the guidelines, platforms considered to be social media are assumed to be accessed by minors and, consequently, are required to perform age verification. If public interest projects are mistakenly defined as social media, they will be required to do the same. We suggested that the ANPD narrow their definition to focus on platforms with high-risk features, and even to go even further by creating a framework for digital public goods that recognizes their low-risk nature and that, accordingly, prevents them from being regulated the same as social media platforms. Learn more about our response in our blog post. Wikimedia’s value in conversations about artificial intelligence The Foundation has illustrated how the explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) companies and services have impacted the Wikimedia projects. We have discussed the negative impact that web scraping to create AI training data has on our technical and human resources, shared how AI companies threaten the social contract behind free and open knowledge, and talked about the technical solutions we are employing to identify and counter this impact. While the vast increase of web scraping is one of the more urgent changes arising from AI’s influence on the internet landscape, there are many other ways that AI tools interact with the Wikimedia projects. The voice of the Foundation and volunteers can contribute significantly with its experience to conversations about maintaining information integrity, making sure that AI-generated content does not entrench existing knowledge gaps, and enabling community moderation so it can remain sustainable while dealing with an influx of synthetic content on the web. Sharing how Wikimedia safeguards reliable information at the UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance [Learn more about why participation at the UN is important for our advocacy goals in our blog post] Jan Gerlach (Public Policy Director) joined the first official session of the United Nations (UN) Global Dialogue on AI Governance to discuss the impact of AI web scraping on Wikipedia and the broader knowledge commons. The UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance was established by the UN General Assembly based on recommendations in the Global Digital Compact to provide a platform for governments, academics, technology companies, civil society, and other interested parties to come together to participate in open discussions about how AI should be governed and to share their best practices. In a panel titled “Safeguarding Reliable Information in the Age of AI: Finding Common Ground,” Jan shared the negative impacts that web scraping by AI tools have on the Wikimedia Foundation’s servers and resources. He shared how Wikipedia can serve as a “canary in the coal mine” for the digital commons as a whole, establishing an early warning when these valuable shared resources are put under strain by new technologies. Leading up to the official session, the Global Dialogue also hosted several consultations in 2026 , including a discussion held by the Office of the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights (OHCHR) that the Foundation attended last May, and will host its next official session in May of next year, 2027. It is vital that civil society organizations like the Foundation are invited to participate in discussions like these in order to continue sharing how new technologies are impacting the online information ecosystem, especially open knowledge, and to work with UN Member States to determine how to best address these impacts and build a more sustainable future for the digital commons. Learn more about why participation at the UN is important to our advocacy goals in our blog post. Wikimania sessions showcased how the volunteer communities are considering the relation between the Wikimedia projects and AI [Check out our blog post for public policy advocacy sessions at Wikimania and learn in Creative Commons’ blog post about their participation at the conference] A popular topic at the 2026 Wikimania was the implications of a world that is rapidly adopting AI at scale. The conference, held in Paris, France, this year, began with a full Day Zero of advocacy-related sessions, including a Creative Commons (CC) salon, which celebrated 25 years of the organization and included several CC staff reflecting both on their beginnings there as well as new considerations AI presents to open licensing. Several sessions during the week also highlighted discussions about AI: from AI’s impact on creativity to what gets lost when data is scraped without important context, and from open legal and technical questions about AI to how we can best defend Wikipedia’s reliability in the age of rapid AI-generated content. Beyond the official schedule, a pre-conference event and several side events focused on AI were also organized alongside the conference. This wide variety of topics not only shows that developments in AI are top of mind in the Wikimedian communities, but also the depth of wisdom that open knowledge communities can share in relation to this new digital landscape. Check out our blog post for public policy advocacy sessions at Wikimania and learn in Creative Commons’ blog post about their participation at the conference. Wikimedians denied a voice at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) for a sixth time [Read our Foundation statement to learn how and why China has vetoed the Foundation’s observer status once again] For a sixth time, the Foundation applied to become a permanent observer at WIPO and was excluded due to a single veto from China. Despite 25 years of experience hosting one of the world’s most visited open knowledge platforms and navigating complicated and innovative copyright issues on a global scale, and even counting with the positive endorsements of many other Member States, a global community of 250,000 volunteer contributors was denied a seat at the table where the future of intellectual property policy is decided. Even more worryingly, this year the denial was not only spurred by misrepresentations about the accuracy and neutrality of Wikimedia’s community-driven policies and practices, but also seems to signal a broader trend in suppressing legitimate participation by civil society, as evidenced by the recent cancellation of the world’s largest digital rights conference, RightsCon. The Foundation will continue to pursue accreditation at WIPO and advocate the representation of digital public goods in the world’s most influential intellectual property policy forum. Read our Foundation statement to learn how and why China has vetoed the Foundation’s observer status once again. Check out the latest issue of the Global Advocacy quarterly newsletter! [Read the newsletter and subscribe for quarterly updates] The eleventh issue of our Global Advocacy newsletter looks closely a the topic of online age verification, launching our three part blog series on the topic with an introduction from Stan Adams (Public Policy Specialist for North America) and Amanda Jardine (Lead Counsel) explaining the value of pseudonymity online to freedom of expression and how both are threatened by these new regulations. The newsletter also contains a cautiously optimistic update on the Foundation’s category status under the United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act (UK OSA), which will determine Wikipedia’s duties under that law. We also celebrated the Foundation joining the Digital Public Good Alliance (DPGA), highlighted a recent New York Times interview with Bernadette Meehan (CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation), and shared news about the Open the Knowledge Journalism Awards recipients and the cancellation of RightsCon. Read more in the newsletter and subscribe for quarterly updates! ________ “Don’t Blink” is for you! Please take one minute to complete our survey about how our monthly public policy advocacy recap meets your needs and reflects your interests. Thank you for reading, every month, about how the open knowledge movement shapes discussions and decisions about the future of the internet! ________ Follow us on LinkedIn, X (formerly Twitter), and Bluesky; sign up for our quarterly newsletter to receive updates; join our Wikipedia public policy mailing list; and visit our Meta-Wiki webpage. We hope to see you there! Can you help us translate this article? 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