Global internet freedom in jeopardy after US cuts funds for anti-censorship groups

For nearly two decades, the US quietly funded a global effort to keep the internet from splintering into fiefdoms run by authoritarian governments.

- Aisha Down

Now that money is seriously threatened and a large part of it is already gone, putting into jeopardy internet freedoms around the world.Managed by the US state department and the US Agency for Global Media, the programme broadly called Internet Freedom funds small groups all over the world, from Iran to China to the Philippines, that build grassroots technologies to evade internet controls imposed by governments. It has dispensed well over $500m (£370m) in the past decade, according to an analysis by the Guardian, including $94m in 2024.

Then came Doge, Donald Trump's department of government efficiency, with the job of reducing the size of US government agencies and initiatives. Career employees at Internet Freedom resigned or were sacked in 2025 as part of larger reductions. Many of its programmes were cut permanently; its main granting office issued no money in 2025.

The Open Technology Fund, a nonprofit that works with the government to direct roughly half of this money, won a lawsuit to have some of this funding restored in December; the Trump administration is now appealing against that ruling.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration this January withdrew from the Freedom Online Coalition, a global alliance set up by the US to defend digital rights.