The Foundation supports challenges to laws in Texas and Florida that jeopardize Wikipedia’s community-led governance model and the right to freedom of expression.
An amicus brief, also known as a “friend-of-the-court” brief, is a document filed by individuals or organizations who are not part of a lawsuit, but who have an interest in the outcome of the case and want to raise awareness about their concerns. The Wikimedia Foundation’s amicus brief calls upon the Supreme Court to strike down laws passed in 2021 by Texas and Florida state legislatures. Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 prohibit website operators from banning users or removing speech and content based on the viewpoints and opinions of the users in question.
“These laws expose residents of Florida and Texas who edit Wikipedia to lawsuits by people who disagree with their work,” said Stephen LaPorte, General Counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation. “For over twenty years, a community of volunteers from around the world have designed, debated, and deployed a range of content moderation policies to ensure the information on Wikipedia is reliable and neutral. We urge the Supreme Court to rule in favor of NetChoice to protect Wikipedia’s unique model of community-led governance, as well as the free expression rights of the encyclopedia’s dedicated editors.”
“The quality of Wikipedia as an online encyclopedia depends entirely on the ability of volunteers to develop and enforce nuanced rules for well-sourced, encyclopedic content,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, Vice President of Global Advocacy at the Wikimedia Foundation. “Without the discretion to make editorial decisions in line with established policies around verifiability and neutrality, Wikipedia would be overwhelmed with opinions, conspiracies, and irrelevant information that would jeopardize the project’s reason for existing.”
laws passed in 2021 by Texas and Florida state legislatures. Texas House Bill 20 and Florida Senate Bill 7072 prohibit website operators from banning users or removing speech and content based on the viewpoints and opinions of the users in question
What the absolute fuck America.
Texas and Florida are pretty well-known as the shitholes of America. Run by populist idiots who cater to the uninformed and gullible voter. I’m sure there are places like that in every country.
Places like that in other countries usually don’t have as much power as US States do. Other countries are better designed and don’t have practically independent sub-countries inside them with their own laws.
Federalism can also be a very good thing to allow autonomy for certain groups within a country, though. I wouldn’t say Unitarianism is a better design by default.
If you are going to compare the United States to other political entities, I think that the better thing to compare it to is the European Union rather than other countries, because like the EU the US was formed from the union of sovereign member states and that is why it is designed the way that it is (for better or worse).
Given that, I have an honest question asked out of ignorance: Does the EU have more power over its member states than the United States does? (I am not super-familiar with it, so the answer may very well be yes.)
The wording of this law makes no sense to me. You could apply it to almost anything
How would it work if, say, a website run out of California or even another country violated this law
Pretty much the same way that Europe’s GDPR works: they fine the business operations within the covered jurisdiction. If you don’t do business in their jurisdiction, you are perfectly free to tell them to shove their regulation up their ass.
Wikimedia collects donations from Texans. If these laws survive a legal challenge, Wikimedia would either have to stop collecting donations from Texas or comply with Texas law.
Wikipedia is one of the most impressive collective creations of the modern world. One day corrupt politicians will ruin it. They’re one of the organizations I donate to every year in my futile hope they preserve it as long as possible. Articles like this just reinforces the need to vote for people who aren’t actually cartoon villains. May not vote for SC but we do for who appoints them.
I donate frequently also. It pains me that people poke fun at Wikimedia or Jimmy Wales for their constant fundraising. It’s such a ubiquitous tool, it’s a miracle that it’s free.
They have so much money that all of their expenses are covered by interest though.
Source? That doesn’t match up with their published numbers, so I’m skeptical. Post up a source if you’re going to make such an absurd claim.
Their endowment is around $100MM USD, as of 2021, which is nowhere near enough to cover their operating costs just from interest. Unless they’re somehow obtaining 112% interest…
Revenue: $162.9 million (2021)
Expenses: $111.8 million (2021)
Endowment: $100 million (2021)
Source(s) here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation
So you could argue that they got plenty of donations in 2021, I suppose. But that’s a very different claim.
More likely, though, you’re just talking out of your ass and have no idea how finances work.
It’s ridiculous that this comment got downvoted so harshly. Wikimedia currently has 250 million $ in assets. They also spend >100 million each year, and for the life of me I can’t imagine where that money could have gone, certainly not on the servers and improving the UX (the recent redesign was totally useless, as far as I could notice). Wikipedia by itself certainly could be funded just from the interest.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Guy_Macon/Wikipedia_has_Cancer
It’s entirely possible to get it out of their reach. It needs to be pushed out to the point of the Pirate Bay.
It’s just begging for their primary mechanism to be decentralized. They could severely reduce their operating expenses if they went to community hosting.
DHT, chunks of it hosted everywhere. New content and corrections come down as deltas. There are already copies of it on IPFS that are relatively robust, as robust as IPFS can be anyway.
So am I to understand that this is yet another attempt by fascists and Nazis to claim free speech rights as a way to destroy free speech and oppress all opposing voices, including those who defend factual information?
I’ve said this before. They are targeting the wrong layer!
They want to force websites to be neutral while allowing the internet providers to block and shape traffic however they want.
Force ISPs to allow access to all websites - good
Force ISPs to allow anyone to host a website at home - good
Force AWS to allow anyone to pay for and host websites on their infrastructure - probably good, but we’re approaching the line
Force websites to host any content a user submits - bad
It’s not about being right or wrong, they know what they’re doing. Quit giving them the benefit of the doubt.
They want to derail discourse so they can apply their politically expedient talking points without competition or questioning.
I wish they would move their base of operations to a country with a more stable government and just ignore weird laws like this.
Honestly moving to the EU is probably their best bet. But laws respecting speech are not nearly as liberal.
But laws respecting speech are not nearly as liberal.
Then I’m not sure if it would be their best bet … Wikipedia relies on free speech on many levels.
Are there more than one?
