# Organization: netzpolitik.org

**Type:** Independent nonprofit journalism / digital rights advocacy
**Founded:** 2002
**Base:** Berlin, Germany
**URL:** https://netzpolitik.org

**Mission:** Report on and defend digital civil rights, surveillance, privacy, and the open internet — funded by readers, not advertising or platform revenue.

**Problems Addressed:**
- **Primary:** PR-00005 (Epistemic Power Concentration) — investigative reporting on algorithmic governance, surveillance capitalism, and the political economy of information. Names power structures that prefer invisibility.
- **Primary:** PR-00006 (Platform Feudalism) — active advocacy for open standards, data rights, and digital infrastructure that citizens control.
- **Secondary:** PR-00004 (Fascization) — tracks and exposes the use of digital surveillance tools by authoritarian actors and state overreach.

**Key Work:**
- **Investigative journalism** — broke stories on BND mass surveillance, police data retention, EU upload filters, facial recognition programs. Published leaked NSA documents during the Snowden affair.
- **Policy monitoring** — tracks EU and German federal digital legislation (DSA, AI Act, Chat Control, NetzDG) and its implications for civil liberties
- **Open internet advocacy** — net neutrality, open standards, against platform monopolies and infrastructure gatekeeping
- **Funding model** — reader-supported, no advertising, no platform dependency. Operates as a nonprofit. Models the alternative to ad-supported journalism.

**Why the funding model matters:**
netzpolitik.org's reader-supported model is itself a structural argument. Journalism dependent on advertising revenue is structurally captured by advertiser interests. Journalism dependent on platform distribution is structurally vulnerable to platform decisions. The funding model is the editorial independence.

**Connection to Values:** VA-00001 (Epistemic Sovereignty), VA-00005 (Digital Autonomy Is Political)
**Connection to Arguments:** AR-00001 (Platform Feudalism Threatens Democracy), AR-00003 (Algorithmic Rationality Erodes Autonomy)
**Connection to Plans:** de-plan1-sven.md — STRATEGY 1 (digital infrastructure), STRATEGY 5 (local/independent journalism)