Open Internet & Web Freedom

On August 24, 2026, X Corp sent cease-and-desist letters to the maintainer of Nitter, a 7-year-old open-source project that let users read X posts without an account, ads, tracking cookies, or JavaScript, and to XCancel, a service built on Nitter. X accused the projects of unlawful circumvention of its API and scraping, citing the Texas Harmful Access by Computer Act and the Lanham Act, and gave a roughly 24-hour deadline. Both services went offline and development on Nitter stopped.

In April 2026, a US District Court issued remedies in the landmark Google search antitrust case: Google was prohibited from entering exclusive contracts for Search, Chrome, Assistant, and Gemini distribution; required to share its search index and user-interaction data with competitors; and placed under a six-year technical oversight committee. Both sides are appealing -- Google challenging the data-sharing requirement, and the DOJ seeking forced divestitures of Chrome and other assets.

In March 2026, X withheld numerous Indian accounts belonging to journalists, activists and parody/satire handles (including a page with 240,000+ followers and journalist Sandeep Singh), citing generic 'legal demand' notices under Section 69A of India's IT Act, with little or no explanation given to affected users. The takedowns came amid a broader surge in Indian government content-blocking activity: government blocking orders roughly doubled to over 24,000 in a year, with more than half targeting X, and in February 2026 India cut the compliance window for removing flagged content from 36 hours to 3 hours. Digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation called the process 'alarming', saying 'secret and inaccessible censorship defeats procedural safeguards' set out by the Supreme Court in Shreya Singhal v. Union of India, and that the targeted content was political or satirical rather than clearly unlawful. X complied with the government orders without public objection or transparency reporting on the specific accounts affected.

On March 12, 2026, EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera announced an investigation into Meta over WhatsApp policies that may block competitors' AI chatbots from the platform. The investigation examines whether Meta is using its dominant messaging position to prevent rival AI services from reaching WhatsApp's user base, as part of broader EU scrutiny of Big Tech's AI operations.

Italy's communications authority AGCOM announced a penalty exceeding €14 million against Cloudflare in January 2026 for failing to comply with anti-piracy regulations related to Piracy Shield. CEO Matthew Prince condemned the fine as 'a scheme to censor the internet,' criticizing it for having 'no judicial oversight,' no appeal process, and no transparency, and requiring services to block content globally not just in Italy. Prince threatened to discontinue free cybersecurity services for Italian users, remove all servers from Italian cities, scrap investment plans, and 'discontinue the millions of dollars in pro bono cyber-security services' Cloudflare was providing for the Milan Cortina Olympics in February 2026.

Ahead of Uganda's January 15, 2026 presidential election, the Uganda Communications Commission ordered all licensed telecom operators to suspend public internet access and select mobile services. MTN Uganda complied, confirming it acted 'in line with its licence obligations.' Amnesty International said the compliance risked making MTN complicit in human rights violations and urged restoration of access, citing UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights; MTN did not respond to requests to address the criticism. Ugandan telecom operators, including MTN, were subsequently taken to court over the shutdown. The incident followed a February 2025 Open Secrets report documenting MTN's broader pattern of involvement in government-ordered shutdowns across Africa and the Middle East, and an October 2025 six-day shutdown in Tanzania during unrest described as the country's worst post-independence massacre.

Following a January 13, 2026 directive (ECO/436) from the Uganda Communications Commission, Airtel Uganda shut down public internet access, social media, messaging apps, and mobile broadband ahead of the January 15 presidential election, alongside MTN Uganda. Airtel did not publicly challenge the directive's legal basis. Human Rights Watch and the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights condemned the shutdown as a violation of the African Charter's rights to expression, association, and political participation. Airtel Uganda and MTN Uganda were subsequently named as respondents in a Ugandan High Court lawsuit challenging the shutdown's legality.

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.

Plaid publicly endorsed and helped shape the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's October 2024 finalised Section 1033 rule under the Dodd-Frank Act, which requires banks to allow consumers to share their financial data with third-party fintech services on demand and free of charge. Plaid's lobbying and amicus participation supported a positive consumer-protection outcome despite the rule's competitive implications for incumbent banks. The rule was a major win for open-banking advocates and consumer data portability.

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.

Adobe and Figma jointly announced on December 18, 2023 that they were abandoning their proposed $20 billion acquisition after the UK Competition and Markets Authority and the European Commission both indicated the merger would significantly reduce competition in interactive product design software. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee. The outcome was a rare instance of European competition enforcement effectively blocking a major US tech acquisition.

On September 26, 2023 Notion Labs blocked all access from mainland China IP addresses, citing inability to comply with China's Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) requirements around data localization without compromising the service's core architecture. The decision affected an estimated millions of Chinese users including students, knowledge workers and independent creators who had used Notion under sustained workarounds. Notion did not provide a transition path, data export reminders or grace period before the cutoff.

In August 2023 Naver released HyperClova X, a Korean-first foundation model trained on a corpus that was 97% Korean and 3% English, representing one of the few production-scale LLMs prioritising a non-English language. The release was significant for Korean-language AI sovereignty and reduced dependence on US-trained models for Korean-language applications. Naver also released smaller HCX-Mini variants for on-device and edge deployment in 2024.

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.

AT&T led industry trade group challenges to California's SB-822 net-neutrality law throughout 2018-2022, arguing federal preemption after the FCC's 2017 Title II repeal. The Ninth Circuit upheld the California law in January 2022; AT&T's industry coalition petition for Supreme Court review was denied in May 2022. AT&T's parallel federal lobbying spend exceeded $10M annually during this period opposing restoration of net-neutrality rules.

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.

On March 6, 2022 GitLab announced it would terminate accounts associated with Russian-government and Russian-IP customers following the Russian invasion of Ukraine and US/EU sanctions. The decision exceeded the legal requirements - sanctions targeted specific entities, not all Russian-IP customers - and prompted criticism from open-source community members who argued the move set a precedent for blanket geographic exclusions from developer infrastructure. GitLab partially relaxed some restrictions for non-sanctioned Russian developers in late 2022 but the broad block largely remained in place.

Comcast's Internet Essentials program, launched in 2011 as an FCC merger condition for the NBCUniversal acquisition, reported in 2021 it had connected 10 million low-income Americans to broadband at $9.95/month. In 2022 Comcast expanded eligibility to all customers receiving any federal assistance program. While critics note the program is required by FCC conditions and Comcast benefits from associated tax structures, it remains one of the largest US low-income broadband programs.