Transparency report - January to June 2023

Twice a year, the Wikimedia Foundation reports on requests we receive to alter or remove content from the projects, and to provide nonpublic information about users. This Transparency Report includes charts and graphs that give details such as the origin of the requests and the projects targeted. We also tell stories of interesting or notable requests, and provide an FAQ with useful background information.

The Wikimedia Foundation envisions a world in which every person can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Our mission is to empower the global communities of Wikimedia readers and contributors as they strive to achieve this goal. We believe that defending against censorship and protecting user privacy are essential to this effort. We committed to protecting and respecting users’ human rights in this regard when we adopted our Human Rights Policy in December 2021. When accurate facts are obscured or deleted, or people are afraid to share information as a result of surveillance, free knowledge and our work to make it globally available are threatened.

When the Foundation does receive a request, we thoroughly evaluate it, and we push back against those requests that could harm users’ human rights or affect their ability to determine what content should be on the projects. And when we must respond to the small number of valid takedown notices we receive, we tell you.

Transparency is a cornerstone of the Wikimedia movement, and our biannual Transparency Report is central to the Foundation’s efforts to shed light on the requests we receive and how we respond to them. In this report, we provide an overview of the requests we received to alter or remove content from the Wikimedia projects, and to provide nonpublic information about our users. You can learn what sorts of requests we receive, where they are from, and which projects were targeted. We hope that this report provides a greater understanding of threats to free knowledge and our work to defend it.