Digital Freedom Fund – Summer 2024 update on new grants
In May 2024, we decided on our latest group of grant recipients, approving 12 grants worth just over EUR 400,000 supporting litigation to advance digital rights in Europe. This included reaching the major milestone of EUR 4 million granted in total since we started in 2018. We’ve now made over 110 grants.
The 12 latest grants were selected from a total of 33 applications, our second most popular call for applications yet and keeping up with the trend of between 32-34 applications over the last three application rounds. The 33 applications were spread across 16 different countries, with the 12 latest grants supporting groups in Azerbaijan, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Serbia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, as well as one project at the Court of Justice of the European Union and one related to the European Commission.
As with other recent application rounds, we were excited to see so many new groups—15 of the 33 applications were from first-time applicants, including groups focused on issues like LGBTQI+ rights, prisoner rights, worker rights, asylum rights, children’s rights, and women’s rights. For reference, there were 40 first-time grant applicants in 2023. Seven of the 12 latest grants went to organisations receiving a DFF grant for the first time.
Of the 33 applications received, seven related to unlawful data use and privacy issues. Five applications respectively were related to surveillance, AI discrimination, and predictive policing. Other topics covered included online harm and hate speech (four), data/privacy legislation (three), censorship (three), protecting media (two), access to information (two), and gig economy workers (two).
In terms of approved applications, three grants relate to litigation to end different forms of surveillance. This includes litigation by Partners for Democratic Change Serbia challenging the illegal acquisition of automatic facial recognition equipment by education and health institutions in Serbia, a case by front-LEX seeking to end surveillance and data-sharing of asylum seekers by the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, and litigation targeting the government use of Pegasus spyware.
Another three grants relate to discriminatory AI and prediction tools. This includes litigation against the police for racial discrimination in police databases, a complaint seeking to end discrimination against Muslims caused by algorithm use by banks, and pre-litigation research to prepare for litigation challenging the use of AI-based tools to assess the revision of prison terms and sentences for prisoners.
Three grants support pre-litigation research to prepare for litigation challenging forms of censorship. Two of these projects relate to the blocking of LGBTQI+ websites, including one led by the Háttér Society who are preparing for litigation to tackle the blocking of websites of LGBTQI+ organisations at public internet access points. Another censorship-related project is by Center for Intimacy Justice to prepare for litigation utilising the Digital Services Act to tackle gender-based censorship of sexual and reproductive health content by Meta.
Two grants support litigation challenging the online suppression of media and journalists in Azerbaijan, and one grant supports litigation to end the illegal collection of children’s data by apps and app stores.
As the projects progress we will share more information about the actors involved and outcomes of the litigation through our case study page.
Looking ahead
Our latest call for applications ran from May until mid-July 2024, with another batch of grants to be approved by October 2024. Another call for applications will follow in November 2024.
Remember to check out the resources on our website, including our application guides and litigation toolkit, to start thinking about or preparing a future application.
Transforming our grantmaking
We are planning a pilot application process using a participatory decision-making model. This means that rather than DFF deciding which applications are approved, a group of people from the wider community will decide. We plan to run the pilot alongside one of our next calls for applications. Building on the lessons from the pilot we aim to gradually update our full grants programme to follow participatory decision-making practices. We will soon share more details about what this will look like.
See previous grantmaking-related updates here: