Wikimedia Foundation

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The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. (WMF) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization headquartered in San Francisco, California, and registered there as a charitable foundation. It is the host of Wikipedia, the tenth most visited website in the world. It also hosts fourteen related open collaboration projects, and supports the development of MediaWiki, the wiki software which underpins them all. The foundation was established in 2003 in St. Petersburg, Florida by Jimmy Wales.

Wikimedia Foundation

Basic information
Founded	2003-06-20
Legal Structure	Non-profit
Industry	Information Technology
Official website	https://wikimediafoundation.org/

Consumer-impact summary

The Wikimedia Foundation is generally pro-consumer and privacy first, despite having some notable incidents.

Various courts have successfully sued the company into censoring certain articles. These articles have a warning notice when viewed from Wikipedia so you at least know you aren't getting what you want.

• User freedom: Open source project, anyone can edit its articles.
• User privacy: Accounts are private, no known data breaches.
• Business model: Funding entirely through donations, including corporate donations.

Incidents

This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the Wikimedia Foundation category.

UK Online Safety Act lawsuit (2025-present)

Main article: Implementation_of_the_UK_Online_Safety_Act#Wikipedia

The Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) sued the United Kingdom to prevent them from forcing age checks on their websites. The WMF made a statement that being forced to comply with this act would compromise the privacy of its editors and the neutrality of the encyclopedia. On August 11, 2025, the London High Court denied the WMF's reasoning, but didn't necessarily force age checks for the website.

Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation (2024-present)

The news agency Asian News International sued the Wikimedia Foundation in July 2024 in India. They alleged defamation and forced the WMF to censor its "Asian News International vs. Wikimedia Foundation" article from October 2024 until May 2025 upon appeal by the WMF.