Open Internet & Web Freedom

In 2024-2025, the Proton Foundation announced donations totaling $1.27 million to organizations including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Mozilla Foundation, ACLU, and European Digital Rights (EDRi). Proton restructured as a nonprofit foundation in 2024 to formalize its mission-driven approach.

In May 2024, Jack Dorsey announced he was no longer on Bluesky's board of directors. He criticized Bluesky for 'literally repeating all the mistakes we made as a company,' taking issue with its shift toward a traditional corporate structure and introduction of centralized moderation tools. He instead endorsed X (formerly Twitter), calling it 'freedom technology.' This represented a shift from his earlier pro-moderation stance.

In February 2024, Mozilla laid off approximately 60 employees, about 5% of its workforce. The cuts notably shuttered Mozilla's advocacy division, which had focused on internet policy, privacy rights, and digital inclusion. Critics argued this contradicted Mozilla's stated mission of keeping the internet open and accessible.

On April 18, 2023, Reddit announced it would charge for API access at rates that would cost major third-party app Apollo $20 million annually, forcing it to shut down on June 30, 2023. Despite 8,500+ subreddits going private in protest (June 12-14) and accessibility concerns from r/Blind moderators, CEO Steve Huffman refused to negotiate or revise pricing. The rapid 30-day implementation timeline was criticized compared to industry standards. Third-party apps were widely used by moderators for organization, spam blocking, harassment detection, and by disabled users for accessibility. The change prioritized Reddit's IPO preparation over community welfare and platform accessibility.

DuckDuckGo has donated over $3.65 million to organizations focused on privacy and digital rights including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Tor Project, and others. The company has been making annual donations since 2011 as part of its commitment to the privacy ecosystem.

In 2022, PayPal permanently suspended the accounts of antiwar publications Consortium News and MintPress News without warning or clear explanation. PayPal froze funds including $9,348 in Consortium News' account and threatened to seize the money as 'damages.' Neither outlet was given a specific reason for the ban. The suspensions occurred during the Russia-Ukraine war period and were criticized as financial censorship of independent journalism.

In January 2021, China's propaganda arm ordered news outlets to strictly echo official line on Alibaba's antitrust probe, prohibiting original reporting and extended analysis. The restrictions also applied to coverage of Jack Ma. State directive required media to limit reporting on regulatory actions against the company.

In October 2020, Stripe acquired Paystack, a Nigerian payment processing company, in a deal reportedly worth over $200 million. Paystack had 60,000 users and gave Stripe infrastructure across five African countries (Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and Côte d'Ivoire). The acquisition was aimed at enabling African businesses to access global payment infrastructure, supporting the continent's growing technology ecosystem.

Between 2020 and 2022, Apple removed at least 53 VPN applications from the Hong Kong App Store, following China's implementation of the National Security Law in Hong Kong in June 2020. VPN apps allow users to circumvent government censorship and surveillance. Apple cited compliance with local law, but the removals prevent Hong Kong residents from accessing uncensored internet and protecting their privacy from state surveillance. Apps remained available in other regions.

Starting in 2020 and continuing through multiple reintroductions, the EFF led opposition to the EARN IT Act, which would have removed Section 230 protections from platforms that use end-to-end encryption. EFF organized public campaigns, testified before Congress, and built broad coalition opposition that prevented the bill from passing.

David Heinemeier Hansson testified before the House Antitrust Subcommittee and Senate about Apple and Google's monopoly power over app distribution. He stated the internet had been 'colonized by a handful of big tech companies that wield their monopoly power without restraint.' He also submitted documentation to EU member states and spoke with EU regulators about App Store competition.

Jack Dorsey announced in December 2019 that Twitter would fund an independent team (Bluesky) to develop an open and decentralized standard for social media. Twitter provided $13 million in initial funding. The project aimed to give users more control over their data and reduce centralized platform power. Bluesky developed the AT Protocol and launched as an independent social network.

On November 25, 2019, Berners-Lee launched the Contract for the Web - a global action plan with 76 clauses and 9 core principles for how governments, companies, and citizens should protect the open web. Over 160 organizations signed including Microsoft, Google, EFF, DuckDuckGo, and Reddit, as well as governments of Germany, France, and Ghana. It has been compared to a Universal Declaration of Human Rights for the digital age.

Mozilla has maintained Firefox as the only major non-Chromium browser engine (Gecko), providing a critical alternative to Google's browser dominance. Firefox includes Enhanced Tracking Protection by default, blocks third-party cookies, and has consistently advocated for web standards over proprietary implementations. Mozilla also supports the development of web standards through the W3C.

In 2018, Berners-Lee took a sabbatical from MIT to co-found Inrupt and commercialize the Solid Protocol - a technical architecture giving individuals control over their data through decentralized 'Pods'. The project directly addresses surveillance capitalism by providing an alternative where users, not platforms, own their data. Partners now include NHS, BBC, NatWest, and governments of Flanders, Sweden, and others.

From 2017 to 2019, Google secretly developed Project Dragonfly, a censored search engine for China that would link users' phone numbers to searches and block sites covering human rights, democracy, and religion. After The Intercept exposed the project in August 2018, over 1,400 employees signed internal letters demanding transparency, 600+ signed public petitions calling for cancellation, and a senior researcher resigned in protest. Amnesty International called it 'an alarming capitulation on human rights.' Google terminated the project in July 2019 under sustained internal and external pressure.

The Internet Archive partnered with the Wikimedia Foundation to identify and fix broken links across Wikipedia. The project has repaired more than 28 million broken links and added 4.2 million new links to books and academic papers, ensuring citations remain verifiable.

Cloudflare has been a consistent advocate for net neutrality. Co-founder Michelle Zatlyn served on the FCC's Open Internet Advisory Committee, contributing to the 2015 net neutrality vote. In 2017, Cloudflare partnered with Fight for the Future for Net Neutrality Day, reaching 178 million page views urging users to contact Congress. Cloudflare filed FCC comments in 2024 supporting net neutrality principles.

On July 7, 2017, as W3C Director, Berners-Lee approved the Encrypted Media Extensions (EME) standard enabling DRM in web browsers despite unprecedented opposition from the EFF, Free Software Foundation, security researchers, and a UN official. Netflix, Google, Microsoft, Apple, and the MPAA supported the standard. The EFF resigned from W3C in September 2017 - the first member resignation in protest - calling it a betrayal of open web principles that creates 'legally unauditable attack-surface' in browsers.

LinkedIn filed suit against hiQ Labs for scraping publicly available LinkedIn profile data. The landmark case reached the Supreme Court in 2021, which remanded it. The Ninth Circuit ruled scraping public data doesn't violate the CFAA. Ultimately LinkedIn won a $500,000 judgment in December 2022 on breach of contract and CFAA claims related to hiQ's use of fake accounts. The case established key precedents about platform control over publicly accessible data versus open internet principles.