How we Fight for the Future in 2026

Staved off dangerous online censorship legislation like KOSA

This year we continued to mobilize queer communities, parents and youth to hold lawmakers accountable for supporting censorship bills and other harmful legislation, including online ID mandates and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA). As stated in our open letter signed by a coalition of over two thousand LGBTQ+ activists, prominent artists and creators, “there is no longer any doubt that these bills would be used to surveil, silence, and isolate our communities.

Along these lines, we launched a new flagship campaign, Queers Against Censorship, which is working to influence power at the state level. Our Massachusetts contingent organized a queer karaoke night to urge lawmakers to publicly oppose KOSA, online ID checks, and misguided rollbacks to Section 230 that would suppress lifesaving online resources for queer and trans youth. We also urged local elected officials to safeguard access to vital online support for LGBTQIA+ and other marginalized communities.

A safe, free, just, and open Internet relies on free expression and comprehensive privacy protections. Our work this year reinforced the idea that censorship is not a solution—it is urgent danger that must be actively resisted.

Brought national media attention to creeping campus surveillance

We united a coalition of 30 leading rights organizations, including Amnesty International USA, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Access Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), to demand that administrators at 60 major U.S. universities end campus surveillance and dismantle invasive data collection systems. To hold these institutions accountable, we partnered with COVID Safe Campus to launch a campus mask policy scorecard. There, CSC’s research highlights how mask bans are being weaponized as tools of oppression, undermining public health, privacy, free expression, and First Amendment rights. We mobilized students, faculty, and disability justice communities to challenge policy, resist mask bans, and expose how, in combination with universities’ expansive camera networks and facial recognition systems, their campuses are complicit in doxxing, stalking, and the suppression of dissent.

Fought misguided online ID checks and called out the platforms pre-complying with these censorship policies

As online ID check bills have gained traction across the US and globally, we’ve been sounding the alarm. All year we’ve worked to halt their spread and explain to communities and lawmakers how these checkpoints threaten privacy and free expression and wall off or censor vital access to community and resources. We want to make clear that such misguided attempts to age-gate are a danger to everyone, whether 16 or 60—especially under the current administration.

To fight, we built out a huge coalition of nearly a hundred groups and released an open letter calling on lawmakers to invest in child safety without sacrificing digital privacy, freedom of information, or the very usability of the Internet. Our campaign has since become a central hub for a year of viral actions.

When members of Congress introduced 19 so called “online safety bills,” many of them focused on age-verification laws, we drove thousands of calls to offices, organized webinars and Reddit AMAs, and livestreamed committee hearings. During these hearings we actually grew hopeful—there was a real, substantive discussion of the censorship and surveillance threats that a number of the bills proposed represent. This is proof that coalition organizing and the voices of young activists are beginning to break through. And while unfortunately multiple states have already implemented these invasive checks, we are building a powerful oppositional force. Next year we’ll go even harder.

Provided digital hygiene tools and campaign support to frontline organizers, from abortion funds to anti-ICE demonstrators

As threats against immigrants, protesters, and organizers grow, Fight is amplifying existing tools and developing new ones to safeguard their rights and their privacy. We have advised federal workers on digital security, provided visibility and support for organizers protesting against DOGE, and collaborated with community-driven campaigns against Flock in cities like Oakland. Throughout this long, difficult year we have produced and distributed resources including an extensive human rights messaging toolkit for challenging surveillance narratives, a VPN privacy toolkit, a widely disseminated “friendly neighborhood hacker” series of security guides, a viral anti-Ring Halloween door hanger, and action maps to join local anti-mask ban fights. For mutual aid organizations, we provided security basic and resources, helped coordinate risk assessments, and pushed for the development of financial privacy tools to keep groups like abortion and bail funds safe. With Repro Uncensored Collective and Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), we launched Report an Incident, a site that documents the experiences of organizations and communities that have faced abortion censorship in order to best fight back against this suppression. Fight’s director Evan Greer has also been spreading joy and the digital security gospel through her widely circulated musical PSAs.

Reached millions with campaigns targeting surveillance tech behemoths like Amazon Ring and Flock

We launched a national campaign against Flock, the private surveillance company responsible for 80,000+ AI-powered automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) in communities across the U.S. These surveillance devices give police and federal agents, including border patrol, the ability to track and trace anyone who drives a car. As communities fight back, we are working in coalition to provide teach-ins, coordination, and social media and press amplification to support campaigns in cities like Oakland that are successfully turning the tide against Flock and other ALPRs. Our demand of lawmakers at the city, state, and federal levels is to address CBP’s and others’ illegal access to this surveillance network and to ban AI surveillance tech.

Our viral Halloween action “No Ring for ICE” warned communities about the partnership between Amazon Ring, Flock, and ICE, and urged people to disable or remove their Ring cameras to protect immigrant families and activists, or to at least activate end-to-end encryption on Ring cameras to prevent the sharing of their data. We continue to call on all community members, individuals and businesses to turn off and remove these dangerous cameras.

We have also pushed back against corporate compliance with authoritarian demands. This year, we challenged Apple and Google for their attacks on user’s rights and their willingness to block apps like RedDot and ICEblock, which help communities report ICE sightings, as well as Eyes Up, which preserves video of ICE abuses which can be used in court.

Organized the largest ever day of action to defend VPNs as a basic privacy tool

When bills threatening VPN use began to emerge, we organized a VPN Day of Action and developed a comprehensive \ toolkit to help people defend their digital rights. We swiftly united major providers and privacy advocates, including Windscribe, the VPN Trust Initiative, NordVPN, Surfshark, ExpressVPN, and the VPN Guild, and organized to launch a coordinated campaign. In a single day, we gathered over 15,000 signatures; by the end of the week, that number had reached 25,000.

Technologies like VPNs are crucial to protecting privacy, human rights and online safety. They help organizers circumvent censorship and surveillance and protect sources, locations, and online identities. Any restriction or ban on their use would have a chilling effect on internet freedom, particularly for marginalized communities. For more information on how authoritarian and pro-surveillance governments are trying to ban VPNs, and why these tools remain essential for protecting everyday people’s rights, listen to Taylor Lorenz’s excellent interview with Fight’s Lia Holland.

Mobilized mutual aid organizations to oppose financial surveillance and push for alternatives to apps like Venmo and PayPal

By challenging financial censorship and surveillance, we help protect the economic lifeline of mutual aid funds and movement organizations. We have consistently called out payment processors (banks, credit card companies, PayPal, Venmo, etc) that try to deplatform or block mutual aid networks , while pushing the developer community to build better tools. This past year commissioned a report, “Financial Confidentiality in the Age of Digital Surveillance,” auditing the privacy-preserving solutions exist for justice organizations. Then we put into action: In collaboration with the UC Berkeley Cybersecurity Clinic, we invited mutual aid networks to participate in a case study that provided pro bono risk assessments. The study helped pinpoint these organizations’ needs to accelerate the development of pro-privacy alternatives.

Called out Spotify’s whack business practices and supported users and artists in a boycott

When Spotify Wrapped splashed across social media pages, we launched its antidote, Spotify Whacked, which called out the platform for its complicity in human rights abuses, its creepy surveillance, and its ongoing exploitation of artists and users. Spotify has repeatedly come under fire for everything from paying artists virtually nothing, to employing a “modern form of payola,” to pushing AI-generated slop at its listeners. They have also supported ICE abuses by running agency recruitment ads, and its former CEO Daniel Ek has used the company’s profits to invest in AI military drones and surveillance tech. Joining fellow activists in exposing the company’s shadowy practices, Spotify Whacked also calls on listeners, musicians, and labels to boycott Spotify as their News Year’s resolution. Additionally, the campaign, which has been covered in press from Vice, the SF Chronicle, and more, provides ethical alternative music apps and platforms that have proven track records of paying and playing fair.