The Digital Freedom Fund (DFF) exists to support the digital rights community in Europe to advance and protect human rights in digital spaces and reduce the negative impact of technology on the world.
We envision a society in which technology and digital spaces are used justly and fairly so that all communities and individuals can fully enjoy their human rights.
Who we support
We support Europe’s digital rights litigators and human rights activists, enabling them to become more effective in their work and seek justice by using strategic litigation as a tool to advance digital rights. Our geographical scope currently covers all 46 Council of Europe countries, as well as European regional courts and forums like the European Court of Human Rights, Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Commission.
How we do things
We do this through grants for legal, advocacy, research, and other costs involved in strategic litigation. Our support extends to organisations advancing digital rights across Europe, offering resources, skills and knowledge-sharing workshops, networking opportunities, and strategy-building events.
The combined efforts of these approaches enable digital rights organisations from Europe to engage in more effective and strategic litigation and build a stronger, more resilient community of diverse groups and individuals.
The team
Message from the Co-Directors
As we reflect on the past year at the Digital Freedom Fund, we do so with both urgency and determination. The digital rights landscape continues to shift swiftly across Europe and beyond—with concerning consequences. Big Tech platforms are tightening their grip on power, forging deeper ties with both democratic and authoritarian regimes while shaping public discourse and digital economies beyond the reach of effective oversight. Authoritarianism is growing, and with it, the silencing of dissent, especially from marginalised communities, facilitated by online censorship and biased systems. From the deployment of biometric border control systems to invasive spyware, repressive digital tools are being used to control people in both online and offline spaces. Our rights are now governed by opaque technologies we neither fully understand nor freely choose, making the fight for digital freedom more urgent than ever.
While some democratic oversight mechanisms fail, courts in Europe have largely remained intact and independent, making strategic litigation more critical than ever for fighting for our human rights and pushing back against
the creeping normalisation of authoritarianism. Newer accountability tools, such as the Digital Services Act and the AI Act, also open fresh avenues for combating repressive regimes and harmful digital tools.
In this challenging context, the Digital Freedom Fund remains a vital force for accountability and justice. We received applications to carry out litigation activities in 25 countries across the Council of Europe, including from groups representing racialised communities, Palestinians, Roma, sex workers, transgender people, gig economy workers, the elderly, women, people who can get pregnant, prisoners, asylum seekers, and children. The demand for pre-litigation and litigation funding in 2024 was the highest we have seen in our history. The groups litigating and issues being litigated are more diverse than ever.
Over the past year, we have supported litigation challenging Big Tech’s abuse of market power as well as its control over users and workers. We have also supported litigation to hold governments accountable for their application and use of technology, challenging the discriminatory use of
predictive policing and digital welfare algorithms, the misuse of facial recognition at borders, and the unlawful surveillance of journalists and activists. In collaboration with partners, we have worked to expose the dangers of automated decision-making systems that deepen social inequality under a veneer of efficiency. These cases extend beyond the courtroom; they represent strategic efforts to transform the digital landscape across Europe and beyond with a lasting, positive impact.
We were also proud to welcome over 100 participants to our 2024 events. Building on our core DFF value of being community-inspired, the majority of the sessions were shaped and facilitated by the event participants. It is critical to give a voice to the impactful, inspiring and brave work that those within our network carry out every day. Only through deepening trust and collaboration efforts within the digital rights community can we hope to hold the almost infinitely more resourced Big Tech and governments accountable.
Our work is made possible by the stability, strength, and shared commitment of our team. In a sector often defined by burnout and high turnover, we’ve spent the past two years intentionally prioritising staff well-being, and we’re proud to report that there have been no staff replacements in the past year. Our distributed leadership model, grounded in shared responsibility and participa-
tory governance, has created a sustainable and empowering environment where people can thrive. By intentionally shifting power within our organisation, not just demanding it elsewhere, we are modelling the equitable structures we advocate for.
The current political landscape calls for deeper collaboration across movements, borders, and disciplines. To weather the increasingly authoritarian environment, we must forge stronger alliances among litigators, technologists, activists, and impacted communities, working together to challenge power and defend rights on every front.
We are profoundly grateful for the continued support of our funders and our digital rights community, whose solidarity makes this work possible. As we navigate an increasingly unpredictable and high-risk environment, we remain grounded and ready to advance our mission with purpose and prepared to respond swiftly as new challenges emerge. Together, we can shape a digital future rooted in justice, accountability, and freedom.
With gratitude, Nikita Kekana & Darrah Hassell Co-Directors at Digital Freedom Fund
As the external environment becomes increasingly hostile, we are grounded in the resilient foundation we have built — one that we stand on and one that we offer to others working toward a just and free digital future.
We are a dynamic group with diverse expertise and passions, all united by a shared mission to ensure that everyone has access to justice and can exercise their digital rights in the online and offline world.
Ekaterina Balueva Communications Officer
Alexandra Giannopoulou Fundraising Lead & Legal Officer
Jihane Jadrane Events and Operations Lead & Well-Being and Care Officer
Darrah Hassell Co-Director & Finance Lead
Splash Dance Well-Being and Care Lead & Community Programme Support
Vaska Cvetanoska Development Officer
Thomas Vink Grantmaking Lead
Nikita Kekana Co-Director & Community Programme Lead
Ewa Pieszczyk Finance Officer
César Manso-Sayao Legal Officer
Our key milestones and activities in 2024
February
Final approval of collectively developed salary model
March
Seventh DFF Annual Strategy Meeting
War Crimes and Digital Rights Panel
DFF’s first digital rights virtual law clinic
May
Surpassed EUR 4 million in grants made since DFF’s establishment in 2018
June
Collective Redress Consultation and Feedback Workshop
Strategic Litigation Retreat
Darrah Hassell & Nikita Kekana elected as Co-Directors at DFF
July-August
Team Retreat
Official shift to a distributed leadership model
September
Collective Action for Platform Accountability Workshop
October
The conclusion of the digiRISE project
Publication of the Available Judical Pathways Report, Pathways to Justice Toolkit
Launch of the DFF’s first Collective Redress Database
December
Launch of participatory peer group decisionmaking pilot in our grantmaking
November
Second edition of our Collective Action for Platform Accountability Workshop
Our work in 2024
Our work falls into two programmes
The first is our Strategic Litigation Support Programme, which provides financial support through grants to groups and individuals using litigation to advance digital rights.
The second is our Community Programme, which focuses on facilitating events and convenings as well as developing resources to support organisations and individuals in pursuing litigation on digital rights issues.
Strategic Litigation Support Programme
2024 was our most popular year for grant applications, with 83 applications received. This included reaching the significant milestone of EUR 4 million granted since we started in 2018. We’ve now made over 120 grants.
Looking back to 2018, when we began grantmaking, we received concept notes and eligibility requests from approximately 230 different organisations and individuals and completed applications from 166 other organisations, and individuals. Of the 166 applicants who submitted complete applications, 74 (45%) have received at least one grant.
In 2024, including additional funds for ongoing grants, we provided nearly EUR 900,000 of funding support to 25 projects across 14 countries, including France, Germany, Ireland, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, 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. We also approved the first-ever grants for Albania and Malta.
We were excited to see so many new groups: 38 of the 83 applications in 2024 were from first-time applicants, and 13 organisations received DFF funding for the first time, including groups focused on issues like LGBTQI+ rights, prisoner rights, worker rights, asylum rights, children’s rights, and women’s rights.
In a continuation of our mission to transform our grantmaking practice, we are piloting a participatory decision-making process in the winter grant application call. Rather than DFF staff recommending which projects should be funded, a group of community experts will review the applications and recommend projects for funding. In November 2024, we held an open call for the community decision-making group. Of the approximately 40 applications received, we selected ten individuals to take part in the pilot. This group of ten will review all of the pre-litigation research applications received in the winter call in the first half of 2025. If all goes well, we would ideally expand participatory decision-making to litigation track support grants.
DFF-supported projects completed in 2024:
3
16
1 Completed Outright wins Outright loss
12 are being appealed
60 Litigation instances completed in total between 2018-2024 Litigation instances Research projects
11
1 losses being appealed win being appealed
10 Completed in 2024 Completed between 2018-2024
24
Community Programme
In 2024, we coordinated five community events, including our seventh annual strategy meeting in March, a collective redress consultation and feedback workshop in early June, a strategic litigation retreat in late June, and two workshops on collective action for platform accountability in September and November, respectively. Overall, our five events in 2024 were attended by 116 different people from 87 different organisations. Our capacity-building and networking opportunity outreach efforts in the digital rights community and beyond continue to grow, with a record 41 organisations attending DFF events for the first time in 2024, the highest number to date.
Nearly 400 different organisations have now been represented at our events since 2018, a significant sign of how we have successfully included a diverse range of voices and actors in the wider conversation around digital rights litigation and the advancement of human rights in the digital space since the very first strategy meeting back in 2018, with 28 organisations attending.
Our seventh annual strategy meeting was our most diverse yet, bringing together around 50 participants from 48 different organisations. Approximately 60% of attendees came from groups whose work goes beyond digital rights, including those representing or closely working with communities disproportionately impacted by digital rights violations, such as children, migrants, Black and other racialised communities, LGBTQI+ people, platform workers, women, and Palestinians.
At our annual strategy meeting, we hosted a War Crimes and Digital Rights panel, which brought together a select group of experts to explore pressing issues at the intersection of military conflict, technology and human rights. The panel focused on the unfolding atrocities in Gaza, addressing the role of Big Tech in silencing pro-Palestinian voices, the use of artificial intelligence in surveillance and warfare, as well as Europe’s enabling role and responsibility in relation to the ongoing genocide against the Palestinian people.
War Crimes and Digital Rights Panel Learn more March
In June, as part of our digiRISE and Platform Accountability projects, we hosted a “Collective Redress Consultation and Feedback” workshop. Throughout the event, we engaged in strategic discussions on leveraging collective action to advance digital rights and EU Charter rights, analysed case studies, and held collaborative sessions mapping available collective redress mechanisms amongst EU Member States and the transposition of the Representative Actions Directive, aimed to inform our collective redress country reports and database.
Later that month, we gathered 15 civil society participants for a strategic litigation retreat at the foot of the German Alps. Participants worked on platform accountability and collective redress cases spanning 13 European jurisdictions, most of which specifically focused on fighting against human rights violations that affect people within marginalised groups, including survivors of gender-based violence, Palestinians, sex workers, and members of the queer and trans* community. Many left with plans for future collaborations, laying the groundwork for impactful legal action and meaningful partnerships.
June Collective Redress Consultation and Feedback Workshop
In September, we hosted a “Collective Action for Platform Accountability” workshop in Berlin. Participants discussed legal frameworks and pathways as well as the practicalities of running collective redress cases. During the workshop, we analysed a variety of funding models for collective redress litigation projects and held an in-person Q&A session with third-party litigation funders.
In November, we hosted a second edition of our “Collective Action for Platform Accountability” workshop. The workshop’s main thematic focus areas were determining and quantifying harm, as well as evidence gathering. We discussed EU case law and national laws related to damage claims, and explored ways to leverage these in digital rights collective redress cases. We also discussed data access provisions in the Digital Services Act and held sessions presenting case studies that highlighted collaborations between technologists, tech researchers, and litigators.
September Collective Action for Platform Accountability Workshop
November 2nd Collective Action for Platform Accountability Workshop
digiRISE
In 2024, our EU-funded digiRISE project officially came to an end. Launched in 2022, digiRISE aimed to explore how strategic litigation can be utilised to protect and enforce the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in the digital age. In its second year, particularly, digiRISE focused on collective redress and exploring other available enforcement pathways for the advancement and protection of fundamental rights in the digital space. Throughout this two-year project, we worked with legal experts, academics, National Human Rights Institutes, Ombuds institutions, and civil society organisations from across Europe to develop the following resources and strategies aimed at equipping and empowering the digital rights community to engage in collective action to advance EU Charter rights.
The Pathways to Justice toolkit brings together key information, strategies, and best practices aimed at protecting the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in digital spaces through strategic litigation. It provides concrete procedural information on the judicial pathways that are available to CSOs, activists, and litigators to invoke the EU Charter, and articulates how strategic litigation can be impactful when combined with other organising strategies. It also includes case studies, takeaways, and reference resources, including a list of strategic litigation guidelines, expert tips, and examples. The pathways to justice included in the toolkit include the Court of Justice of the European Union, national courts, National Human Rights Institutes or Ombuds institutions, representative actions, and quasi-judicial pathways such as complaints to Data Protection Authorities and Digital Service Coordinators, as well as other options provided by the Digital Services Act.
One of our key milestones this year within the digiRISE project was the launch of our very first DFF law clinic, which was comprised of a series of online sessions connecting civil society organisations with expert litigators to help develop their strategic digital rights cases. The clinic’s aim was to raise awareness of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights’ relevance for protecting digital rights and improve knowledge of judicial pathways to enforce them, promote the use of collective redress mechanisms to protect Charter rights, and provide both participants and experts with an opportunity for mutual learning, exchange of good practices, and collaboration. In the end, the participant responses to the clinic were overwhelmingly positive. In particular, civil society representatives expressed that they felt comfortable discussing their case with their assigned expert, while experts appreciated the level of autonomy they were given to run their sessions and thought that the pairings were well matched.
Law Clinic
Pathways to Justice Toolkit
Learn more
Learn more
This open-access database provides a comprehensive overview of collective redress mechanisms aimed at supporting strategic litigation to protect EU Charter rights in the digital space. Covering ten selected EU Member States (Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland), the database maps substantive and procedural aspects of these mechanisms, along with relevant practices and case law. It spans developments from the pre-harmonisation period through to the implementation of the EU Representative Actions Directive in the selected jurisdictions. The database also includes the complete collection of community-sourced collective redress country reports and a compare and analysis report of the ten selected EU Member States.
The Available Judicial Pathways compare-and-contrast analysis report aims to provide a snapshot of what practitioners in our network consider viable legal mechanisms and pathways to enforce the Charter in ten selected EU member state jurisdictions (Germany, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Italy, Greece, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland), and how the potential to leverage them may vary or correlate across these different legal systems. The research project on which this report was based on ran in parallel with the collective redress research that informed our collective redress database and reports, and both research projects leveraged input from the same network of experts.
Available Judicial Pathways: A Comparative Report
Collective Redress Database
Laying the New Groundwork
Distributed Leadership
After a year-long staff-led collaborative process to adapt DFF’s structure to our organisational needs and values, DFF adopted a distributed leadership model in June 2024. The new model moves away from a single director hierarchy and distributes leadership throughout the organisation, putting decision-making with those closest to the work. It was no easy task to tailor an entire operating model and create all the necessary tools to make it work. Still, despite the challenges and questions that arose along the way, the process has been highly rewarding for the team.
In a traditional hierarchy, people at the top of the hierarchy are often recognised for the team’s work, and especially in small organisations where staff wear many hats, a lot of work goes unrecognised. A distributed leadership model formally decentralises decisionmaking throughout the organisation, giving each team member formal recognition of their contribution to our mission and work. We also want our organisational structure to ensure that lines of accountability within the organisation and who is responsible for what are not only well understood but also formalised and feel legitimate.
Distributing leadership is also about ensuring that our external aims and values, which involve fighting for a world where justice and anti-oppression are the norm, are also practised within our organisation.
A possible misconception is that we have replaced one Director with two Co-Directors.
In fact, we have changed the structure of the organisation to distribute leadership formally.
In practice, this translates to a model with multiple operational layers. We created a four-level model with each layer representing a type of function at DFF:
• Programmatic layer
• Operational layer
• Coordination layer
• Leadership layer
Working in a small organisation of less than 15 people limits vertical career paths. However, there is still an opportunity for staff to develop a diverse skill set and take on new responsibilities.
The new structure distributes tasks and decision-making, including rotating roles, which gives everyone more opportunities to grow, build new skills, and take on or hand over responsibility.
Since the beginning of 2024, we have operated under the new flatter structure, completing a full program without any setbacks. We have organised five events, including our annual strategy meeting, produced complex deliverables, especially for the digiRISE program, and ran two grant application calls.
Furthermore, the staff as a whole is now more motivated to work because we have more control over our daily
New Salary Model
Alongside these organisational changes, we implemented a new salary model in February. The new model was created collaboratively, and salaries were agreed upon based on the principle of consent. Rather than the previous band-based model, with individuals then negotiating on their own for changes, the new model uses a formulaic approach, consisting of two parts:
1. A base salary calculated based on the cost of living;
2. “Role components” that reflect the level of responsibility the employee has at DFF.
The role components are added to the base salary to determine the employee’s total salary. In a final phase, staff agreed that “Social Factors” should also be factored into compensation as a third component. Social factors would include factors such as the number of dependents and the degree of oppression in society.
By going through this process and discussing what we really think compensation is about openly, we have made compensation fully transparent and collectively understood, and reduced tension in the team.
Our impact
In 2024, we collected nearly 50 outcomes achieved by our grantee partners, including legal wins, positive changes for negatively affected communities, and increased collaboration and capacity among digital rights litigators.
As of the end of 2024, our grantee partners had started 115 instances of litigation and 41 pre-litigation projects. In 2024, 14 litigation instances and nine pre-litigation projects were completed. Below we document some highlights of impact achieved in 2024 through the litigation and pre-litigation projects we have funded.
Check out our newly published report, Highlighting Litigation Success in the Digital Rights Community, for a summary of outcomes and analysis from the whole 2018-2024 period.
Check out our regularly updated case study page for more information about each of these projects, as well as new projects and updates.
Success Stories that made an impact
March
In March, a Polish district court ruled in favour of Spoleczna Inicjatywa Narkopolityki (SIN), a harm-reduction group for drug users, against Meta, declaring the removal of SIN’s Facebook and Instagram pages unlawful due to a lack of justification and redress. Coordinated by Panoptykon and supported by DFF since 2018, this landmark case, the first of its kind in Poland, marks a significant victory for online freedom of expression and has already influenced the country’s implementation of the Digital Services Act, ensuring better judicial redress in content moderation disputes.
In July, the Netherlands National Institute on Human Rights ruled that ING Bank discriminates against customers based on their ethnicity. The Public Interest Litigation Project (PILP) had supported three ING customers in filing a complaint, arguing that ING used an automated decisionmaking process, which resulted in people with “non-Dutchsounding” names being flagged as potential terrorists and having their accounts frozen. The ruling applies to all financial institutions in the Netherlands that use similar screening methods.
November
In November, the Italian Data Protection Authority fined food delivery platform Glovo for EUR 5 million and ordered corrective actions after Reversing.Works (formerly Tracking Exposed) exposed unlawful surveillance and algorithmic punishment of its riders. Citing a breach of GDPR Article 22, the decision was one of the first official rulings against algorithmic management in the gig economy and could serve as a key precedent for regulating similar platform practices.
Following litigation from the Campaign against Homophobia, a ruling by a Polish court in 2023 mobilised the prosecutor’s office to undertake actions to pursue justice for victims of hate speech and homophobia—notably in 2024, the prosecutor’s office submitted indictment acts, and secured convictions for some of the cases. Prosecutors also started working with the Campaign against Homophobia’s attorneys, who constantly monitor the case.
Pre-litigation research
Showcasing the importance of our pre-litigation funding for enabling litigation, six pre-litigation research projects moved to litigation in 2024.
Worker Info Exchange completed research on the lack of transparency and fairness in decision-making processes associated with ride allocation and workforce performance management by gig economy platforms. This resulted in a multi-country regulatory complaint filed in the UK, Ireland, Sweden, France, and Belgium.
Similarly, Center for Intimacy Justice (CIJ), who completed pre-litigation research and is now preparing for litigation enforcing the EU Digital Services Act (DSA) to address gender-based censorship by Meta platforms and other Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs). CIJ found that Meta systematically suppresses information about women’s sexual and reproductive health, misclassifying it as “sexual/adult” despite allowing mass erectile dysfunction and men’s health ads.
Additionally, following a research grant to Open Rights Group, the “Challenge the Checks” coalition was able to establish a clear body of evidence relating to issues concerning migrant health, comprising testimony of those with lived experience, expert opinions, and legal opinions. As well as being used to help inform future litigation plans, these will be published and shared so others can benefit and use this information to advocate for access to healthcare for migrants.
Post-litigation activities
In 2024, as part of our pilot of “post-litigation” support funding, Women’s Link launched the “Connecting Rights” website. This microsite explores the intersection of sexual and reproductive rights with digital rights. On the microsite, there are three toolkits, one for each region in which Women’s Link works: Europe, Latin America, and East Africa. They include instruments and experiences designed to foster exchanges between feminist and digital activism, as well as to expand the exercise of sexual and reproductive rights within this environment.
Similar to previous years, our events continued to be praised for their organisation, accessibility, quality of facilitation, and network opportunities. Across four of our events in 2024, an average of 89% of participants agreed they had increased their skills or knowledge after attending the event. For our strategic litigation retreat, this was 100%. Across all five events, everyone at least partially achieved the objectives they had for attending.
Some of the most noticeable results in terms of case advancement are often achieved from strategic litigation retreats. For example, five applications submitted in our call for grant applications in July 2024 had been workshopped at one of our recent litigation retreats. This highlights an important relationship between our community and grantmaking programme.
“It’s amazing to gather different perspectives and sharing time and space with people who have a diverse knowledge of topics.”
Annual Strategy Meeting 2024
“[I learnt] how much preparation and collaboration is needed to build a case. How careful we must be and have a holistic approach.”
Strategic Litigation Retreat 2024
Our finances and spending
DFF’s 2023-2026 strategic goals are to:
1. 2. 3.
Increase the grantmaking budget to better accommodate the high demand for grants to support strategic litigation, especially to organisations and individuals outside the traditional digital rights community;
Bring Community activities up to operational capacity while bringing more intersectionality into the work;
Stabilise operational capacity and internalise our organisational values to improve staff satisfaction and well-being.
In 2024, DFF made significant progress towards accomplishing each of these goals. The grantmaking budget increased to more than EUR 800,000, compared to EUR 764,550 last year, to fund strategic litigation, post-litigation initiatives, and pre-litigation research. The collaboration between different projects, such as DigiRISE and the platform accountability initiative, continued to grow
under the direction of the Community Lead. A majority of events were co-organised, leading to more resource availability in both staff time and funding for each event. Additionally, DFF successfully completed DigiRISE, our first project funded by the European Commission. Finally, the shift to a distributed leadership organisational model has drastically improved staff well-being and satisfaction while operational spending decreased year on year by 4.5%.
With financial gains and losses included, total organisational spending in 2024 increased slightly to EUR 2.16 million (2023: 2.15 million; 2022: EUR 1.77 million). As in 2022 and 2023, Community activities continued to expand, leading to a 17% increase in Community spending. At the same time, operational spending, including staff and staff-like consultants, reduced by approximately EUR 40,000 year on year, bringing the total operating ratio down to 38%. If we were to allocate staff time to activities, overhead expenses would drop below 20% showing that DFF’s operational efficiency is very high.
See our 2024 audited accounts here.
Our Governance
DFF’s Board is formally charged with oversight of all activities and vested with all decision-making power of the organisation. The DFF Board was deeply involved in DFF’s shift to a distributed leadership model, providing the team with support and guidance while adapting their role as a Board to align with distributed leadership principles.
A list of our Board members and their expertise and experience can be found here.
Weaving Liberation
Weaving Liberation is an entity hosted at DFF, one of the fruits of the Decolonising the Digital Rights Field in Europe process coordinated by DFF and European Digital Rights (EDRi). For Weaving Liberation’s first year of operation, Weaving Liberation was financially accounted for as a programme at DFF. To learn more about Weaving Liberation’s first year, please consult their first annual report available on their website. From 2025 onward, Weaving Liberation’s work and staff will be segregated and accounted for separately.
Annual Report 2024
The Digital Freedom Fund supports strategic litigation to advance digital rights in Europe, by applying decolonising principles to enable the digital rights community to exercise their collective rights in digital and networked spaces. Providing financial support for strategic cases, DFF is well placed to catalyse collaboration among activists, litigators, and the whole digital rights community.
