What Nonprofit and Community-Based Platforms Contribute to the Ongoing Policy Debate about Online Platform Governance
Written by: Stan Adams, Lead Public Policy Specialist for North America at the Wikimedia Foundation; and, Amara Banks, Student Fellow at Yale Law School Information Society Project (ISP)
Online platform governance is a ubiquitous policy issue defining the future of internet communications. As social media websites continue to reshape interactions and relationships, the question of how they should be regulated has become more pertinent. This conversation has often remained within the context of large for-profit platforms, whose operations consider many interests beyond its users. However, since policymakers often overlook the ways their proposals could impact other parts of the internet, last December, the Wikimedia Foundation and Yale Law School’s Information Society Project (ISP) gathered a group of lawyers, policymakers, scholars, and researchers to reframe this discussion and include nonprofit and community-based platforms. The result was a fountain of ideas and perspectives that pushed the bounds of what platform governance could look like.
Our group began the workshop with a rich exploration of the current content moderation considerations surrounding not-for-profit platforms. Highly diverse and mission-driven, the use cases of websites like Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, the Debian Project, and Mastodon illustrate their significant contributions to the internet ecosystem beyond monetary value. They derive their value from fostering community-driven content creation and moderation as opposed to the centralized moderation models of larger, for-profit platforms.
Community-based and nonprofit platforms play a significant role within the public sphere and the political economy. They are also essential to the health of our online information ecosystem. Websites like Wikipedia provide the world with trusted and reliable knowledge and act as an antidote to disinformation. In partnership with local media and community-based content, nonprofit platforms also foster democratic participation, public health awareness, and access to education.
However, these platforms’ reliance on volunteer contributions and operations without a formal organizational structure presents unique challenges in the face of proposed legal changes. Changes to safe harbor laws, such as Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act (CDA), as well as proposed legislation aimed at protecting children online, could both directly and indirectly impose burdensome obligations on these platforms. In addition to impairing platform operations and sustainability, these legal changes could lead to over-censorship and threaten the free flow of information.
Our workshop revealed just how broad and complex the landscape of platform governance really is. Even though many not-for-profit platforms share concerns regarding the potential impact of legislative changes, their distinctions in function, purpose, and usership reveal how different their governance needs are. For some of the workshop participants, this distinction also raised the question of whether for-profit and nonprofit is the best way to delineate regulatory treatment of these models: The commercial differences between platforms like Wikipedia and Quora might not warrant differences in their regulatory treatment due to their similar functions. Should the mission and structure of a platform inform how it is governed?
What about federation as a structural solution to regulatory challenges? Our discussion also led to reflections on how federated models could potentially alleviate content-related harms through competition and innovation in moderation practices. Federated models offer a promising avenue for mitigating online harms through decentralized governance, tailored content moderation, and risk mitigation strategies. This decentralization could empower communities with greater control over content, thus addressing specific harms more effectively while fostering a diverse and pluralistic online space. However, it also highlights the challenges in regulating such models due to their complexity and the diverse functions they serve.
The complexities accompanying platforms of varying profit statuses and governance structures illustrate the need for nuanced, multifaceted approaches that consider their unique characteristics and purposes. In addition to considering decentralized models, these policy approaches also require understanding the demographic implications of platform use, and navigating legislative challenges with a nuanced understanding of platform functionality.
Ultimately, many in the group agreed that public interest projects should not evade regulation, but should use it as an opportunity to showcase the benefits of the not-for-profit model and encourage its adoption by other platforms. These approaches have enabled platforms to advance important values for organizations in this space, such as data minimization and human rights protections. The group also recognized that the nonprofit model brings its own financial and structural challenges. Competing with major players in industries such as online advertising and digital media content distribution, whose pockets are far deeper than the nonprofit players, highlights the need for public investment and support for not-for-profit initiatives.
There are various legal, technical, and policy-oriented strategies that could foster a healthier internet ecosystem. But getting there will require collaborative efforts among policymakers, platform operators, and the broader community to create a more inclusive and diverse online public sphere. We hope this workshop was just one of the many active discussions in pursuit of workable solutions for all.
